Fire and Ice
by altol
Summary: Seifer and Quistis. One man's redemption. One woman's awakening. Two souls journey into an uncertain future...with even more uncertain feelings. Finished.
1. A Fallen Knight

Disclaimer: This is a Final Fantasy Fanfiction featuring Seifer/Quistis predominantly. If you're looking for a fast-paced romance, you might want to look elsewhere. Unfortunately, I don't own any part or parcel of Squaresoft, and I'm pretty sure I never will. The original characters belong to me, but that's about it. I may think of different, witty ways to say this throughout the chapters, but let this be my big declaration. I'm poor, I'm bored, and I'm borrowing these characters to play with for awhile.

**~_Fire and Ice~_**

_**Some say the world will end in fire;**_

_**Some say in ice.**_

_**F**__**rom what I've tasted of desire**_

_**I hold with those who favor fire.**_

_**But if it had to perish twice,**_

_**I think I know enough of hate**_

_**To know that for destruction ice**_

_**Is also great**_

_**And would suffice.**_

_**-Robert Frost**_

I hurt myself today

To see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

The only thing that's real

The needle tears a hole

The old familiar sting

Try to kill it all away

...but I remember everything.

-Hurt, NIN (recommended listening)

~Chapter 1~

*

Seifer Almasy had been staring at the white wall of his hotel room for the past three hours, waiting for the meaning of life to fall from mildewed tiles.

After a few hours, creamy ripples twisted like the velvety spray of the ocean running back and forth along the surface, interrupted by small black dots that crowded his eyes from the effort. His eyes burned, narrowed, as if he could see all the way to the bottom of the frothing white ocean...all the way to the bottom of his heart.

Needless to say, his mind was far from the wall of room 105E.

It was an odd feeling, being sober and thinking sober thoughts for the first time in almost two years. The experience evoked a bitter taste in his mouth, like chewing old gum or rubbing a healing wound, peeling the scar away to see the blood flow again. Swallowing pride. Picking at old scars. Choking down his own failure.

Two years of gasping for air though a muddled maze of booze and bitterness.

The Sorceress War had been over that long. The buzz had died down… and heroes and villains alike were fading, as heroes and villains were bound to do. Maybe, somewhere, there were people that had forgotten the name of Seifer Almasy, and all that name had come to mean.

Seifer, however, doubted that the amnesia of a thousand GF's could make _him_ forget.

The posse had been disassembled…broken and scattered to the wind. Fujin and Rajin were back at Garden, doing the only thing they felt educated enough to do, fastened like mussels to the only true stronghold they'd ever known.

Puberty Boy and his raven-haired princess were no doubt living a fucking fairy tale, as only a hero and his angel could.

The rest, who knew…who cared.

War made heroes of some, cowards of others……………

Mostly, it just made skeletons of men.

Seifer closed his eyes.

The Sorceress War.

_It wasn't your fault._

He laughed. Of course it was. He'd wanted to kill those SeeDs, all of them, one by one. Wanted them to kneel before him, to recognize that he had always been stronger than them, had always been better, had walked outside their stupid lines and saw the world for what it really was.. In that moment, he would have destroyed them all, just to know what glory felt like. Just to taste it on his lips, just for a second, as their blood ran beneath his boots. They didn't understand that. They couldn't

In those moments, glory was worth everything. More than friends. More than truth.

More than life…if what he had done years ago was living at all.

Ultimecia had made everything a dream, slow and languid, and he remembered that time now as such. A stretch of time…flashes of faces, pain, blood- even his laughter back then seemed far away. Her words, commands, wine-red lips pulling the leash taut around his throat. He remembered her finger beneath his chin, tilting it up like a child, and her eyes, swimming with the mad and endless dark, drawing him in.

_"Follow me, little one. Follow me, and I will bring you glory."  
_  
And he had. But the only thing she had given him was shame, shame that ran thick and potent every day of his life. Shame that refused to run down the drain…shame that refused to be chased with a bottle.

_You reaped your own failure._

Ultimecia had simply provided the scythe.  
_  
Her eyes, her lips, her hands on him in the dark…._

…**."Who are you?"…**

……**.."Don't you know? I'm a hurricane."……**

And what a storm, one that had ripped him up by whatever feeble roots he'd had and whirled him into a world unlike any he'd ever seen…………or ever hoped to see again. When that storm had ended, when all thoughts of glory had faded, he found himself lost in a sea of time, descending from madness to an even greater lunacy- his ears trained for the storm but his body surrounded in complete and constant calm.

Ironically, perhaps, it was **her** that found him, sprawled in some damned dirty hotel whose name, even now, eluded him. But not so surprising, maybe. She had always known where to find him, whether beneath the shadows of card tables or beneath the shadows of a slum hotel. Fujin and Rajin were behind her, already part of a world Seifer had long forsaken and wanting him to rejoin it. They'd come for him, to reunite the posse, to glue together the old gang. They brought news of his absolutism from Balamb Garden, bringing him hot dinners and broken promises, tattered hope he could not, would not choke down.

Like Edea, he had been acquitted based on insanity. Possession. Sorcery.

'Innocent of the heinous crimes committed during the sorceress war'.

He had to laugh at that.

And the bounty Galbadia had on his head? Alive and well. Fujin and Rajin actually thought he'd be safe at Garden.

Idiots.

…and her. Matron. Mistress.

**Edea**.

They all wanted to make him whole again.

They were fools to think that familiar pieces of Seifer Almasy still existed.

Truthfully, since that day, years ago, when he had followed Edea, no, Ultimecia, trailing in her wake like and panting as eagerly as the fucking lapdog the papers had branded him as, Seifer felt like a puzzle of flesh and agony, one that had been scattered to the four corners of the world.

**Broken.**

**Dismembered.**

**Forgotten.**

She stood there before him in the doorway: beautiful, whole, repentant, telling him that he was always welcomed home. There was tension between them, a kind of mutual sorrow that hung heavy in their chests, sagging down like an iron heart.

Hers, for loosing a rope around an unsuspecting neck.

Seifer, for having the lingering suspicion that he had willingly wound it around his own throat.

There was nausea in his belly and screaming in his skull as he looked at her.

_Edea_.

He still loved her like a mother, and perhaps, as Ultimecia, he had loved her as more. His memories ran like watercolors.

The paint was mostly red.

His eyes flickered across the ceiling as he remembered the sorceress, the one who wore Matron's body so well. A goddess, Ultimecia, a Pandora's box that promised dreams but delivered agony...now, however, she was only Edea, the kind, gentle soul who'd raised soldiers on smiles and buttermilk pancakes. An omnipotent mother sparrow that had known their destinies better than they ever could have foreseen. Puberty Boy, Selphie, Irvine, Quistis, even Chicken-Wuss. Balamb's Heroes, who took flight in glory. Made any mother proud.

Seifer Almasy, however, was the sparrow that fell from the nest, and falling was a bitter sting that throbbed in his veins every day from the moment he opened his eyes.

The seeds of darkness were always in him. The sorceress had simply sown them.

_Her eyes on him, pulling him into the dark ocean of her iris into the storm that awaited. "__Take my hand, Seifer. Follow me to a place of no return."…………._

But he _had_ returned, returned to a world of routine and solitude that he barely recognized. He had not expected to return……….in truth, he had not wanted to. The life of a rebel, a visionary was meant to be short- the brief and glorious lifespan of a warrior mayfly. They were not supposed to grow old.

Then again, they were not supposed to _fail_.

Towards the end, he simply wanted to feel her nails score through his heart, to feel her ice in his chest………just to feel anything at all.

He'd wanted to win. He'd wanted power, and perfection.

Now, here, he contemplated his future in a tiny, reeking pit of a hotel room in a nameless slum, surrounded by the shards of a stupid dream.

His future. Was there such a thing? Did men like him have futures?

He stared at the letter in his hand, a torn and tattered notice bearing Cid's signature at the bottom. An offer.

_A SeeD?_

It was odd to hear his name in conjunction with it without the word 'enemy' inserted into it. His re-admittance, would finally attach his name to something meaningful and permanent. He wasn't sure how he felt about it. It was like marrying discipline- tying himself to everything he had ever scorned or hated or mocked, and now finding that he wanted those things. Order. Something dependable, some sort of structure.

He had come to worship the idea of structure, half-starving in a roach-infested motel whose name had been long forgotten in Seifer's memory. He'd always remember the smell though, remember the screaming of a woman in the floor above him, a prostitute being beaten by an angry pimp. Remember the screaming infant the woman had left alone in the room for hours at a time and knowing that this was where he would rot, this was where he would die.

He'd lain on the floor, staring at the wall, feeling absently the scuttle of _something_ on his skin and not giving a shit about anything around him, much as he had his entire life. Only, now, he had stopped caring about himself.

Fujin and Rajin came and went, trying to drag him out of it. He vaguely remembered their visits.

He _vaguely_ remembered everything.

_Fujin, setting down a carton of food on the table._ _"EAT." She practically shouted at him. Cartons from past weeks rotted underneath the bed. Seifer continuously moved them there to avoid Fujin's motherly fangs._

"PATHETIC." Scoffed Fujin, arms folded. Her voice sounded hazy, far away.

Rajin, standing in the doorway as Seifer lay sprawled out on the bed. "Can't you see what you're doing to yourself, ya know?"

"I've got a first-rate seat, yeah." Replied Seifer, taking a sip out of the glass bottle in his hand.

"PITY PARTY." Scoffed Fujin, eyes narrowed with disgust. "COWARD."

"Get off your dead ass, man." Said Rajin. "There's still a world out there."

Seifer never took his eyes off the ceiling. "Yeah, I've been there. Sucks." He slurred. Room service had brought the vodka. Or maybe not. For all he knew, it was the Vodka Fairy. He had a tab a mile fucking wide by now, and he was pretty sure the manager was aware that he couldn't pay a red cent. Seifer didn't care where it came from; it was in his hand. It could have been cyanide for all he cared.

There were nights he wished it was.

_He'd been annoyed at them until Rajin had taken the bottle away from him. Then he'd been downright pissed. Even in his drunken state, he'd managed to get in a few licks before Rajin shoved him off. He couldn't remember, but he thought he'd broken Rajin's nose. Fujin had pried them apart, her normally sharp eye soft and sad. _

"_What the fuck do you want from me?" he snarled, staggering to his feet. "_**What do you want from me?!"**

"_LIVE." She'd said simply, closing the door behind her._

Somehow, being with them wasn't enough anymore. Standing on a dock waiting for some greatness to fall on him, staring at the sky feeling his guts drain out of him with every breath he took, and Fujin's quiet smile and Rajin's antics weren't enough to stop it.

He was nothing. He had never been anything and was worthy of nothing.

He did not look in mirrors anymore- he could only see the shadow of disgrace lurking behind him.

_I am my father. I am my father._

He slipped in and out of consciousness, the hot, stagnant breath of the room filling his nose with odors of sweat, garbage, and from the radiator, the pungent and lingering odor of sewage. The sheets teemed with roaches and the maid, if there even was one, had stopped coming, or had never come at all. He shoved rent in a slot down the hall when he remembered with money he didn't remember earning. He didn't remember often, but the owner was scared shitless of him anyway.

There was a dangerous air to a man that carried shadows in his eyes. They usually echoed through the empty hollow of his heart…and in the barren wasteland of that area, a man was capable of all terrible things.

Sometimes he left, but he rarely remembered where he'd been. Sometimes he'd wake up in alleys, sometimes in strange rooms with bad cuts and bruises from fights he could scarcely recall. Women were flashes of skin and empty laughter, each vacant encounter leaving him even more hollow than before. Their eyes were as empty as he felt. He spent hours in the shower afterwards, staring at the floor until his vision cleared.

Life, breath, circling down the drain.

Absently, he wondered where the stopper on his soul had gone.

He had paid no attention to the door. He would stare at the wall, the way he was staring at this one, waiting for answers to drop like the roaches from the ceiling. Much the way he had stared at the sky, in time compression, feeling time itself run thick in his veins…waiting for the sky to fall on his heart.

He probably should have died there.

He should probably die here. End the story. End the guilt. End this fucking nightmare of a life.

But, for some reason only Fate could determine, he had decided to take a walk along the pier. With him, of course, was a bottle of gin, the liquid through which all his failures could become greatnesses, or at least, failures farther back in his mind. He stumbled across the docks, staring out at the gray sea until night fell. And then, like an orb of shimmering candles, he saw her pass overhead, as he had that day, two years ago. Her lights sparkled on the water as she turned silently, seductively, a looming fortress of strength that rolled over him like a gentle roar.

Garden. Cornucopia of dreams. Of failures. A place bursting with memories, with pain, with promise.

A frown knit his pale brows, and he felt the bottle slip in his hands.

_Dare he hope?  
_  
He heard the bottle smash at his feet, but it seemed far away.

_Was there hope left in him?  
_  
It was his last thought before he passed out.

In the morning, when he awoke, the bitter taste of alcohol and bile clinging to his lips, he found a new feeling, a new emotion stinging in his chest like acid wound through his veins as he dragged himself back to the hotel.

_But how far would this thing carry him? _

_Time to see._

Seifer sighed, sitting up on the dirty cot. Hyperion met his gaze from across the room, its silver stare strong and steady. He hadn't touched it…………not since that day.

He got to his feet, slowly, walked over to where it lay. With shaking hands, he picked up the gunblade, squeezing the cool handle as if it were the hand of an old friend. A light glanced along the blade, stinging his eyes.

His eyes narrowed, the pools darkening with an emotion he couldn't name as he swung, his arm attempting a shadow of his former grace.

And suddenly he was outside, walking, his step growing quicker with every step.

His trench coat, now faded and battered, caught the wind behind him.

There was just enough left in him to carry his legs back to Garden.


	2. A Frozen Queen

_A Soldier's Flesh_

_A heart of glass_

_Ingrained with steel_

_Made less than flesh_

_Was made to feel_

_An eye of ice_

_Arm deadly grace_

_A mask carved swift_

_In death's brief face_

_Distant flesh_

_Swords made from bone_

_This part of the soldier_

_Is always alone  
_

…_..Eternal parts_

_Are made in jest_

_The mind accepts,_

_If hearts digress…………._

-altol

Disclaimer: Don't own anything. Please review!

~Chapter 2~

Quistis Trepe stared down at her coffee, and her coffee stared steadily up at her.

The iris of the black sludge eye was provided by the piercing florescent lights of the classroom, which hummed softly overhead. She squinted, daring the rippling white pupil to move. It was a common rumor that Garden coffee could pick itself up and walk out on a person, and she wanted to make sure her morning fix wasn't going anywhere.

She didn't have the energy to chase it.

Her head was supported by her balled fist, cheek sliding up to crease her eye.

Although she'd been up for sometime, she was far from awake. She was also far from asleep, caught somewhere between a caffeine haze and a mild daydream filled with abstractions of white knights that carried her from towers of paperwork.

The more conscious part of her wondered what she had ever deemed so glorious about being SeeD when she was younger. The foolish child high on Edea's sugar cookies and an innocent lust for glory was now a tired, ex-instructor with a shitty desk job and an addiction to caffeine. Everything that had seemed a good idea when she was 8 now seemed a lack of perspective.

She had stayed up all night going through a previous mission's protocol paperwork, and was now enjoying an awareness solely dependent of the Garden's standard issue coffee, (also known as standard-issue swamp sludge.) In fact, she was pretty sure that the latter title was the coffee's common name. She took a sip, and made a face.

"Surprised it doesn't form legs and walk itself off the table." Came a chirpy voice behind her.

_Too_ chirpy.

She groaned, but didn't move her gaze from the coffee, suspiciously eyeing it as if it would do that very thing at any given moment.

Instead, she adjusted her hand on her chin. "Are you suggesting that the Garden coffee is evolving, Selphie?"

The pretty young messenger beamed. Hands filled with papers and a pencil propped up on the ridge of her right ear, she was the very image of disarrayed cuteness. "Stranger things have happened, or _will_ happen if they're gonna let that lapdog back in Garden." She observed, blowing a strand of brown hair out of her eyes as a frown marred her normally cheerful features for a moment. "I don't know how you did it all these years, Quisty. Grading these papers- what a pain!"

Selphie had been teaching an early-level Junctioning course for nearly a year, and though she enjoyed the field training aspects of it, she hadn't yet gotten used to the paperwork.

The young blonde simply nodded. "Might as well form an addiction to Garden's coffee early on. It may rot your intestines, but it's certain to keep you awake."

"Nope! My perkiness is all-natural!" replied her friend, beaming.

Quistis put her head on her folded arms and groaned in response. Selphie's cheerfulness was, at times, like having one's semi-consciousness poked with a stick.

_A sharp one._

Selphie shuffled through her papers, unaware of her friend's disgruntled response. "Say, I've got a question. Xu handed me a bunch of these forms, and told me to deal with the transfers, but I thought we were supposed to be using the I-D4 forms for all new or transferring students. There're minimal slots for previous coursework here, that doesn't make sense. And where the heck do we file those?"

Quistis removed her head from her arms, reaching up to study her friend's stack of papers. "These are I-D4**5 **forms," she corrected, shifting through the papers. "And those are inter-class transfers, that's why there's only one bar line under coursework. Here, you've got Qirk Chager transferring from Instructor Greyson's class to yours. You file those up on second floor, under student admissions, in the white bins next to Glyphias' desk."

"Ooooh! I get it!" exclaimed Selphie, leaning backwards to keep the rest of the paperwork from falling down. "Thanks a heap Quisty! I'll see you at lunch!" With that, her friend was gone in a burst of papers and energy, the clop of her boots echoing erratically down the hall.

"Not if I fall asleep first." She muttered, struggling to keep her eyes open as she scrawled a quick note about poor weapon standards. She glanced up and stole a wistful glance at Selphie's retreating form, remembering her own days as an Instructor with no little sense of longing.

Ironically, she was sitting in her old classroom, the only room available during 1st period. Sitting in her same desk, she felt a rush of nostalgia and instantly quelled it. She hadn't reapplied for the position after the Sorceress War, and wouldn't until the time was right. She still remembered the night of her dismissal with a kind of stale pain, a patch of acid carried in the muscle of the brain like a constant, functioning ache.

…………_Poor leadership qualities..Instructor 14 lacks a basic lack of control and distance with her pupils………….._

Just because those things were probably true…didn't make them any easier to read.

That night had been the low point of her life, in more ways than one. It wasn't every day a person could say they'd had their heart broken twice. Even fewer could say they'd had two of their most precious dreams crushed before their eyes in the space of a few hours.

It seemed Quistis Trepe was destined to excel…………….in failure.

With a quick shake of her head, she bent her head back down to her papers, in a hurry to get them finished. Squall would rather chop off his own hand than fill out mission protocol forms, and Quistis had been foolish enough to offer. Her ill-advised 'generosity' had earned her three sleepless nights thus far in the wake of a rash of missions, and despite her SeeD training in sleep-deprivation, the effects were beginning to show.

_I must be hearing things,_ she thought to herself. _I could've sworn Selphie said something about letting a dog into Garden._

After about fifteen minutes of her red pen wandering off of the pages, Quistis gave up and got to her feet, glasses clattering on her desk. She stretched and downed the rest of her coffee, scrunching her nose at the sludge on the bottom: a mix of sugar, powdered cream, and Hyne knew what else. Frankly, she willing to let the deity keep the knowledge to himself.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose where her glasses pinched the skin and stared blankly out at her note board of 'THINGS TO DO'. She still had the papers to go through, and after the papers, she could look forward to revising her lesson plans for submission and a strategy session with Cid and Squall before lunch. After lunch, however, she looked forward to a nice long nap, and maybe a longer bath.

THINGS TO DO….paperwork, meetings, sleeping.

When did life get so exciting?

_Who am I kidding_, thought Quistis wryly; _it's been like this, and worse._

Then again, everything seemed a little….tame….after Ultimecia.

It wasn't that she lacked friends. The old group was seldom seen apart, their ties ones born of battles, victories and losses. Difficult bonds to break…memories of blood, sweat, and comradery difficult ones to forget. She could still feel the sweat that plastered her hair to her head and the feel of Squall's body heat beside her as she stared into the gaping shell that was once Ultimecia's face, could feel the heat of Rinoa's spells and hear the crackle of Irvine's gun. A team. More than that. Friends, siblings, irrevocably sewn together by Fate itself.

So little had changed since then. Selphie was still as bright and cheery as ever, Squall just as ornery, (if not a little more talkative), and Zell was just as sweet. Irvine was still, well, Irvine, and Rinoa was still as perfect.

Quistis frowned. Had _she_ changed? Furthermore, had she changed for the better?

That night at the celebration, she'd felt the first of the aches. It was odd, but she thought they would have faded by now, the way other pain did. Normal pain. But this pain was far from it.

As a young cadet, she'd once been careless with a Fire spell, resulting in a very nasty burn on her hand. The pain was excruciating at first, but after awhile, she'd become so accustomed to it that the painkillers made her feel almost empty. It frightened her that loneliness could fill a person just as easily as anything else. Faster, in fact. Until there wasn't room for anything else.

It filled her now.

Oh, and they noticed it once in awhile, caught the flash of it in her eyes, and tried to be soothing, inclusive, interested.

She lied. Just tired, or, something in her eye. Too much paperwork to go out. Too tired. She'd become adept at lying, but was still, admittedly, still piss-poor at being alone despite her mantra that perhaps if she was alone enough, she could learn to accept that she was meant to be that way. She could understand this desire no more than she could quell or quench it. It was a feeling, a yearning like breathing that hurt with every breath.

After the Sorceress War, the Trepies were worse than ever. There were flowers outside her dorm room, and for awhile, there had been t-shirts until Cid had put a stop to it. They were still around, though- whispers, looks, the occasional note taped to her door.

She was admired, but not understood. Revered, but not loved. It was an empty sycophancy, one that filled neither her bed nor her heart.

It was so hard being weak when you wanted so desperately to be strong….when so many expected it of you.

Sighing, she sank back onto the top of her desk, dimly aware of the gleam off the monitors and the air conditioner humming in the corner, fighting against the ever-present ache in her stomach, the one that surfaced when she couldn't keep herself busy enough. It was a strange pain, distant and bitter and hollow, like harboring quiet termites that chewed slowly and softly, a cancer of whispers. That was loneliness, in the simplest of terms. A strange, silent little parasite that clung to weakness…exploited dreams and wishes and 'what-ifs' until they became festering clots ripe for sucking.

And if that was true, she was running out of blood.

Some burning itch sprung to her eye, but she twitched it back. Feeling sorry for herself had never accomplished anything but wasted time. She hadn't cried- not since that night in the Secret Area. She wasn't going to now, not over some sick and childish fantasy. She had her friends, Garden, and someday, if all went to fruition, she would have her license back. She _would_.

And then, somehow, the world would magically fall into place.

Her fairy tales always were horribly constructed.

"Quistis Trepe, please report to the Headmaster's office. I repeat, Quistis Trepe, to the Headmaster's office immediately."

Shit. She had completely forgotten about her meeting with Cid. Probably something concerning more paperwork. Disgusted with herself, Quistis carelessly wiped her arm across her eyes, catching saltwater and mascara on the jacket. Turning, she hurried to her meeting, for which she was unfathomably late.

She was just tired, that was all.

_Just tired._

The lights of the hallway flashed by her as she strode, catching on the bob of her flip and lighting the shine on her boots. Quistis Trepe. Polished. Poised. A rank A SeeD that needed no one.

She was getting so very good at lying.

She _almost_ believed herself.


	3. Ride Into Purgatory

**When Dreamers End**

_If the world goes on without the light_

_And the stars exist without the night_

_And if the fields could sing without the wind_

_Do beginnings end, or ends begin?_

_When the lights go out_

_When the wars are done_

_Is adventure lost_

_Or a beginning won?_

_So, if deception can only begin with deceivers_

_And if beliefs have to end with believers_

_If makes me wonder, if only a moment_

_The dream_

_Does it end with the dreamer?_

-altol

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment._  
__Friedrich Nietzche_

Chapter 3-Ride Into Purgatory

Seifer stared blankly at the glossy furnish of Cid's desk, as he had for well over an hour now. His stomach was pressed flat against his spinal cord, a nervous sickness stuck in his neck and lodged in his throat. It shivered there, the uneasy quake threatening to dispel the piece of stale toast and even more bitter coffee whose acid still clung to the back of his mouth from that morning. He jiggled his left leg, once again glancing at the exit.

His eyes occasionally darted around the room, waiting for some renegade sniper or even Squall to bust into the room swinging to hack his head off. Mostly though, he stared at the paperweight on Cid's desk.

He _wanted_ the damned thing.

It was a simple crystal paperweight, carved in the shape of a rose. The liquid petals caught the light, refracting it onto the rich, polished wood of the desk and spreading a rainbow across his papers.

If only his own life were so fucking simple.

He didn't want the paperweight, really. The thing in itself was fucking tacky. More, he wanted what it meant.

In the last hour, that stupid, simple paperweight had come to symbolize all that was simple and dull in the world. A paperweight- an aesthetic object used but for the purpose of securing papers from a streamlet of air conditioning, or from an open window. Two things that had been decidedly absent in his life for the past two years. It was a gift for a person that had every shirt and tie clip a man could ever need and currently had nothing to worry about but stray papers.

Just for a day, he wanted that life.

Everything currently sitting in the chair with him constituted his worldly possessions. One tattered gray coat, one bloodstained vest, (his old silver necklace had been plucked off him the first night he passed out in the alleyway), one pair of tattered leather pants, and an even more worn out pair of boots, the tongues of which were also missing. The soul on the right boot had long since given up its claim on the bottom, and his trench coat looked more like a wraith that was stuck to his back than a garment that was intended to keep him warm. The only thing of any real value lay in his lap, soaking up the light like a silver cat.

Hyperion.

He was surprised that they hadn't confiscated it at the door, although they had somewhat roughly confiscated _him_. He had the bruises as evidence of that, and a nice gash on his side that resulted from a disagreement with the gatesmen. But for whatever reason, they hadn't taken his gunblade. Apparently, he didn't look like much of a threat anymore. It didn't surprise him. There was so little fat and muscle left on his body, sitting itself was uncomfortable.

He almost chuckled. The great Seifer Almasy…the great revolutionary, the rebel, sitting in Cid's office, waiting for his punishment.

How does groveling taste, Almasy?

He found, now, that groveling tasted a lot ike stale toast and old coffee…like a lead anchor in his gut.

The door opened suddenly, causing his head to jerk as he jumped to his feet, eyes narrowed, what muscle he had left clinging defensively to the bone in preparation for a back attack. Hyperion clattered to the floor, but the noise was lost on his ears.

"At ease, Almasy."

Something about that voice caused every hair on his neck to bristle, hackles raised, his body far from responding to the issued command.

"_Leonhart_." He didn't turn. He knew it was true before the words left his mouth.

Both Squall and Cid walked behind Cid's desk, with Cid taking a seat and Squall taking his place by Cid's side, looking as uptight as ever. He'd heart that Leonhart was the new commander, and had taken the position somewhat reluctantly.

Seifer smirked to himself. _Who's the lapdog now, Squall?_

"Cid informs me you want your old place back at Garden." Said Squall, his voice carrying the same, unreadable tone that it had two years ago.

Seifer regarded him with an even gaze. "That's right."

"Tell me why you deserve it." Replied his former adversary, folding his arms.

Anger boiled up in an instant, already heated by the shame that had been plaguing him since the last of the alcohol left his system. At least with the alcohol, he hadn't felt like biting everybody else's head off.

Although Squall probably would have been an exception.

His lip curled back, eyes lit up with an old challenge. "Sure, as soon as you tell me why the fuck I have to justify myself to _you_?"

Cid gestured calmly. "Seifer, Squall is now the Commander of this Garden, and surely the well-being of Garden is in the best interests-"

Squall's eyes narrowed. "This is ridiculous. He's the same person he was two years ago. He hasn't _learned_ anything-"

"Listen, if you think I'm going to kiss your asses to get back into Garden-" he started, and for a moment, the men in front of him got a glimpse of the old Seifer Almasy. Defensive, angry, and a danger born solely of that union.

The door opened. "I'm sorry that I'm late-"

Sweet perfume accompanied by a voice of steel. "_Trepe_." He snarled.

_Could this day get any worse?_

Quistis' eyes widened as she realized exactly who the tattered apparition standing in front of Cid's desk really was. She had overlooked him at first, but now stared, horrified, at the skeleton that stood before her. Tattered gray coat with faded red crosses, chin-length, unkempt blonde hair, and guarded jade eyes suffused with barely constrained derision-

"Seifer Almasy?" she asked, incredulous, wonder quickly giving rise to anger.

He spared her a glance. Her hair was still as blonde and still as long, swept up in the familiar do. Her stick-up-the ass posture hadn't changed much, either.

Her head snapped back to Cid and Squall. "What the hell is _this_? Why wasn't I informed?"

Well, _she_ certainly hadn't changed much, either, thought Seifer, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"What, Trepe? No warm embrace? No welcome back?" he sneered.

Cobalt blue eyes fixed on him, and, unlike before, there was no trepidation of his presence to be found there. Just a mix of shock and incredulous fury. "You-" she began, her voice hushed with anger.

"Enough." Ordered Cid, his new tone one he seldom used, and one that commanded instant compliance.

The two snapped their heads back to attention.

Any more tension, and the room was going to explode. Seifer amused himself a moment by imagining bits of Puberty Boy's pretty face splattering on the far side of the wall before focusing on what Cid was saying.

"-has been in the cards for some time, since the Council's ruling. Seifer has accepted our offer of amnesty here at Balamb in accordance with that ruling. " Replied Cid calmly, answering Quistis' previous question.

The young SeeD's back was as straight as an arrow shaft. "Forgive me, **sir**, but I don't see what he hopes to accomplish _this_ time." Her voice, though even, carried a poorly constructed illusion of calm, and for some reason, it annoyed the hell out of him. Then again, her voice usually had.

"Maybe I'd like to _graduate_," spat Seifer. "With a capable instructor, this time." Unless he was mistaken about good ol' Quisty, he was hitting her right where it hurt.

Pain flashed quick and hot in her chest before she could quell it. And by the look in his eyes, she was sure he'd caught it. Damnit. It was the same games again, cat and mouse. During her time as an Instructor, it had annoyed her to no end that she had always seemed the mouse in such spats, and apparently two years had made little difference in their dynamics.

Damn him.

She narrowed her eyes at him, lips curling back in a mixture of anger, hurt, and disgust. "What's the matter? Did you run out of holes to crawl in?"

He sneered. "Actually-"

"Enough!" barked Cid.

Quistis quickly turned back to Cid, clenching her fists. "Forgive me, Cid, but is my presence here necessary?"

"Yes, Quistis, it is." Replied Cid. "The idea is-"

"Forgive me, Headmaster," said Squall evenly, "But I still haven't heard why we should let him _in_."

Seifer tensed, resisting the urge to leap forward and wring the 'Commander's' neck. He caught Quistis glance at him, eyes fixed as if she could read his thoughts.

He sighed, his clenched fists releasing the slightest of fractions. "I want to do something…with my life." It was like spitting nails saying those words, especially in front of two of his former peers.

_Why the hell did I come back here?_

_Because you had nowhere else to go, idiot._

Cid nodded. "Garden has decided to give you a second chance, Seifer. Edea was given the same forgiveness- there is no reason you should be denied it. You'll be given your own dormitory, one new uniform, and one chance. One. You'll be under 24-hour surveillance, at least until the board members feel that you have become a productive member of Garden and that the restrictions can be lifted. You'll have someone assigned to you-"

Cid continued to talk, but Seifer had tuned out. A second chance, being handed over the table under Squall's cool, watchful eye. And in an instant, Seifer knew exactly why. It made sense.

After Edea's absolution, it would seem a hypocritical move by Garden not to give her 'aide' a little absolution as well. It would reflect a great inconsistency on Garden, especially since Edea was its Headmaster's wife. He'd be observed…an obedient little lap dog with all his shots.  He almost smirked, even as his guts trembled like they were on fire.

He almost would've preferred a real slap in the face, instead of a subtle one.

"Ah. Forgiveness in the interest of politics." He snarled. "Not because you actually _believe_ I'm innocent."

"You should be grateful," spat Squall. "After all the things you've done."

"Fuck off, Puberty boy." Ah, there it was. That same rivalry, that same bitterness that burned like acid in his belly.

Squall's eyes narrowed. "I can kick you out of here anytime. The first person you threaten, the first clue I've got that you're the same traitor that walked out of here two years ago, you're out of here." Squall replied with equal assertion.

"Hiding behind a desk now?" quipped Seifer, taking a step forward. "It suits you, _'Commander'_." Snide emphasis on the last word.

Squall's hand was on his gunblade handle in a flash. "Insult me again."

Seifer opened his mouth, but another voice was quicker.

"Enough." It was Quistis, frustration and exasperation now fueling her outburst. "Cid, please tell me why I'm here so that I can leave." If any of the men in the room were surprised at her curtness, none showed it.

"Seifer," said Cid. "You are excused for the time being. Please wait outside for a moment while I speak to Quistis."

"Whatever." He muttered, reluctantly breaking the icy stare of his old enemy. He picked up Hyperion and cast Squall a meaningful gaze before stalking out of the room with all his former fervor, wishing he had a door to slam behind him.

Quistis turned to regard Cid and Squall with a look that suggested immediate violence if she were not soon informed of just what was going on.

Cid cleared his throat, which was never a good sign. It was usually a prelude to something Quistis didn't want to hear.

Like, _'Quistis, I'm sorry to inform you, but the board has terminated your Instructor's license'_, or '_Quistis, we need a secretary temp until we can replace Amy'._

"Quistis, it is the consensus of Squall and I that you should be the one to evaluate Seifer's……….ability and condition." She heard the words dimly, as if they echoed in some distant nightmare.

"_What_?"

"You've been nominated to be in charge of Seifer's surveillance."

She wanted to pinch herself, but knew with horror that no nightmare could be this malicious.

An iciness enveloped her, laced with dread at the notion. She crossed her arms. "Respectfully, I refuse."

Squall spoke up. "Quistis, you've been his Instructor before. You know him better than most of us, how to predict him and-"

"Evidently I **don't**," snapped Quistis. "As you both can plainly see, I'm no longer an Instructor at this Garden thanks in part to that deficiency. Give him to Xu."

At least Xu would beat the crap out of him.

Cid raised an eyebrow. "No other Instructor wants the job, and frankly I don't feel any other Instructor is qualified."

"Well that's too bad for him, isn't it?" seethed Quistis, past the point of caring that she was overstepping her rank. "You can't assign me every unwanted assignment that comes up in this office. I'm a SeeD, Rank A, not a temp." She folded her arms, trying to control her trembling. "I refuse to take him on again. He's caustic, he doesn't follow orders, and his attitude towards me and every other authority figure he's ever encountered in his life is intolerable. Just because he stumbles back in here looking like some run-down vagabond, doesn't mean he's suddenly repented. It just means-"

"Quistis, please." A figure moved in from the corner as a side door opened, and emitted a willowy shadow whose perfume carried like lilacs.

Quistis frowned. Apparently Squall and Cid had known she would refuse the assignment. So they'd sent their most potent weapon.

_Matron_.

Quistis steeled herself against the soft, pleading tone, knowing all at once it was futile. Dark, soft eyes fixed on her. She was as beautiful as ever, the unchanging enigma of their childhood with her long flowing hair and a dark house dress.

"Quistis, I know you are not unfeeling of Seifer's plight. It has been difficult for him…………as it has been difficult for me. You would not deny me, would you?"

Quistis stared at the shine the office light lent to her boots. "You know I wouldn't, Matron." She said softly. "But it's different."

A hand brushed her shoulder, soft as the caress of a rose petal but a thousand times as insistent. "Quistis. You know it isn't." Her voice was soft, always soft, but carried an undertone of quiet righteousness that would seem arrogant and out of place on anyone else. But she was Matron. Wisdom fit her, a quiet cloak draped over beauty and gentleness that had all drawn them in like a soothing tide as children.

Now she looked kindly down at Quistis, her smile more frail than normal. "Sometimes the pasts of others make it difficult for us to believe in their futures. It is how we treat them that paves their way towards redemption, or towards their failure. Quistis, please. I am asking you. Do for him what you would do for me."

The young SeeD reluctantly met the eyes of the woman that had been the only real mother she had ever known. They both know she could not refuse her. She looked past Matron for a moment to cast a heavy glare at Cid and Squall, letting them know what she thought of both their tactics and their assignment.

She didn't need this. There was enough turmoil in her life without looking after the likes of Seifer Almasy. He'd attack her every chance he got, resist her at every turn, and most likely drive her completely, stark raving mad.

She grimaced.

"I'll do it."


	4. Old Instructors, New Beginnings

Disclaimer: Yes, that's right.I own Squaresoft. Ha. And if you believe that, I have some wonderful lakefront property that I'd like to show you in Death Valley.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (don't remember who said that, but I know it wasn't me!)

Chapter 4

Seifer alternated glaring at the ceiling and glaring at passing students as he leaned against the wall, folding his arms. The older ones clearly recognized him, but the younger ones must have had a sense of impending doom, the way lemurs sense an incoming storm. He sneered at them, and they formed a wide arc around him, whispering. A few of the braver ones glared.

He could hear Trepe yelling inside, and it almost brought a smile to his lips. Whatever they were discussing in there obviously didn't agree with her.

But then, in his own experience, not many things did.

Looked like Puberty Boy had lost his hold on her, if she wasn't rushing to do his bidding at the drop of a hat anymore. It had always bothered him, as students, how she always rushed to his rescue, panting after him like some bitch in heat. Whenever they fought, it seemed Quistis was always between them, shielding Squall, bandaging his cuts while Seifer sat bleeding in detention. In retrospect, Seifer would admit to starting most of the spats, but he remembered all too well staring at the detention walls, bleeding all over the desk for a fight he had little to do with. But that was the way it was.

Everyone loved a hero, after all. And Seifer Almasy had never been a hero.

All at once, the yelling stopped, and curious, Seifer strained to hear what new development had occurred in Cid's office. Less than a minute later, the doors slid open, and he was almost mowed down by a furious blonde streak.

She cast a glance over her should that would turn marble to dust. "Come on," she muttered.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Where are 'we' going?" he asked suspiciously, without moving. Careful on the 'we'.

Quistis sighed and turned around, putting her hands on her hips, anticipating the first of no doubt many spats. "I am going to show you your quarters, give you a change of uniform, and answer any questions you might have."

_And kill you if you don't cooperate_, she added silently.

"Why?" More suspicion lingered on that tongue than any politician could ever hope to acquire in a lifetime.

Quistis grit her teeth.

_Good question._

"Are you going to question everything?" she snapped. Not even five minutes, and already, she could feel her resolve bending.

"Can you stop being a bitch for one minute and actually _answer_ a fucking question?" The familiar caustic banter.

It was just like old times.

Quistis sighed, running a hand over her face as she prayed to Hyne for patience. She had spent less than five minutes with him, and already she wanted to pluck Save the Queen off her belt and strangle him with it. "I have orders to look after your well-being for as long as you're here at Garden." She said simply.

Seifer visibly recoiled, then burst out laughing as the implications of that sunk in. "YOU'RE going to watch over ME! Fucking Hyne! One failure on your Instructor belt wasn't enough?"

She stiffened. "I'm not your _Instructor_."

"Then what the hell would you call it! _Babysitting_?" he shouted, exasperated, waving Hyperion around like a child's toy as he threw up his arms. The hall traffic had a more visible arch to it now, a ninety-degree angle clearing around both the ex-knight and the female SeeD that was now muttering into her hands.

Quistis decided not to answer that particular question, especially because, frankly, she _didn't_ have a better word for it.

"Will you quit swinging that thing like a plastic wiffle bat?!" shouted Quistis, ripping her hands away from her face. "You're going to take someone's head off!"

Seifer's emerald eyes never left her. "Yeah, 'cause that'd be a real fucking tragedy," he said evenly, regarding the whispering idiots that looked after him with saucer- like eyes with a curt tilt of his head. Fucking lambs scared of their own shadows, all of them.

Quistis just rolled her eyes. "Come on. I have better things to do than spend an afternoon discussing the merits of decapitation with you." With that, she turned, and began stalking down the hallway. Glaring, he followed after.

It wasn't as if he had a lot of choices.

_Hell, that was why he was _**here**_, wasn't it?_

"Yeah, I'm sure your schedule is just _filled_ with events." He called after her, trying to match her quick stride. "Got a Trepie autograph session after this, or what?"

She ignored him, and he turned his focus on the rapidly passing walls of Garden, the familiar twists and turns quickly re-committed to memory. This place hadn't changed much.

He glared at the figure in front of him who stalked angrily ahead, books balanced on her hip. Neither had the fucking people.

Quistis muttered to herself as swiped her card, and the uniform/equipment room opened up to view. Low rows of pants, jackets, boots, standard-issue gunblades, whips, rifles, chains, ammo, and first aid kits lined the walls, each item tagged and in perfect line.

The order made him nauseous.

"Hi!" said a perky girl behind the counter, ponytail bobbing as she leaned over the counter. "Can I get something for you?"

Quistis ignored the girl and turned suddenly towards him, a quick movement that made him jump. He glared at her as she ran her eyes up and down his form, squinting in appraisal.

"What? Like what you see?" he sneered, holding his arms wide.

Her eyes met his, and he was almost taken aback by what he saw there. Her eyes were strangely emptied of fear, but instead, held a hard anger he hadn't seen matched for years, tinged with disgust. It was almost refreshing- hate was more predictable.

His life was filled with so many fucking choices these days.  To be hated or feared, to be spat on or lusted after. All for a past he wished he could undo every day that he was cursed to live and breathe.

He watched, frowning, as she snatched a roll of measuring tape from a nearby counter, setting down her books. "Give me your arm."

"Why, so you can hack it off?" he snapped.

"With a roll of measuring tape?" she quipped, eyes narrow with exasperation. "Give me your arm!" He glared at her, Hyperion swinging idly in his grasp. Quistis stood her ground, fuming.

The girl at the checkout's eyes went wide, half-hiding behind the counter as she watched the exchange.

"Give me your arm," hissed Quistis, "Or I'll blow it off and measure it myself."

Cursing at her under his breath, Seifer proffered his arm, sheathing Hyperion at his side. It wasn't so much that he thought she would actually do it, but rather, figured that if he listened at least she'd shut up.

She measured his arm, waist, and chest, her hands and the tightness of the tape surprisingly gentle. He closed his eyes as she wound the tape around his waist, fighting the urge to push her off. It was an instinctive reaction. No person had been this close to him for months. No person that wasn't trying to kill him, anyway.

Although he couldn't exactly rule out Quistis just yet, he thought, cracking a sliver of an eye open to look down on her glossy blonde head.

She turned from him then, the smell of her wafting back in her wake. Raspberries. Whip leather. The tang of mag summons. Was she junctioned? Probably. Hell, it was Trepe.

He grit his teeth and rolled his eyes at the ceiling, the tenseness caused by her touch fading. He hated this fucking place.

_Then why are you back here?_ Gritting his teeth, he repressed the nagging little voice.  He already knew the answer, which was as annoying as the question.

Quistis' eyes scanned the racks, quickly grabbing the standard issue items normally handed over to every new student upon entrance.

"One student uniform, male, size medium, white shirt and shorts, same size, one pair of boots,  size eleven, seven pairs underwear, size medium, one SeeD conduct manual-"

"Like I'm going to fucking read it." Chimed in Seifer. He felt like a little kid being outfitted for fucking pajamas. Shit, Quistis Trepe was picking out his _underwear_ for him, for Hyne's sake.

"Maybe you should this time." interjected Quistis coolly, dumping the items in his arms before going back for more. "Seven pairs white socks, one pair black, one jacket chain, one comb, and I have clearance to retrieve the room key for SeeD dormitory 106d."

"Aren't you going to equip him with a basic weapon?" asked the girl, pausing in the middle of her furious attempt to take all the items down on the equipment slip.

"He already has one," replied Quistis dismissively as she went over the inventory sheet, adjusting her glasses.

Seifer grinned, and, 'obligingly' lifted his coat to show the nasty arc of Hyperion hidden beneath it.

"Um, ID please," asked the girl, still staring at Seifer. Quistis procured the ID, then waited impatiently for the computer to register clearance.

"SeeD Quistis Trepe. ID no. 597514. Clearance approved." Spit the machine. The girl quickly tore the receipt and slid it across the counter. "Um, I'll need his signature, too."

Swearing, Seifer set down the already teetering bundle and stalked to the counter, angrily grabbing the pen and scrawling an S followed by an unintelligible scribble across the paper before shoving it back across the counter, but not before Quistis' observant eye caught a glimpse of his hand. A long, pink scar traveled across the width of the entire palm. It was long healed, but at the time, it would have been a frightening injury. Absently, she wondered where he got the mark. His eyes swept down her at that moment, and she turned away, handing him the room card.

"Let's go." She muttered, grabbing both his boots and her own books before storming past him.

"Yes, _Instructor_." Cooed Seifer in his most sarcastic tone.

"I **told** you not to call me that," she snapped as they walked out the door, leaving behind a very confused, skittish SeeD behind the counter who wasn't quite sure what to make sure of what had just taken place.

_Don't call her Instructor, huh?_ Well, that was one way to get under her skin.

After an uncomfortably silent walk, Quistis stopped them in front of a plain SeeD dormitory. He could barely see her over all the crap that was piled into his arms, but the bounce of her flip and the horse clop of her boots gave him a pretty good idea of her location. Besides, everyone in the hallway avoided them anyway, due to his 'fame' and Quistis' thunderous expression.

"What?" he asked her, finally, when nothing happened.

"Open the door," she snapped, "Unless you'd like to stand here all day."

Swearing at her, he swiped the card, which revealed a plain, ordinary SeeD dorm, just like the one he had left behind. Minus all his old stuff, of course.

A bed, a desk, a tiny bathroom with sink and private shower, and one small closet. The shower was an upgrade, but not by much. Quistis walked in, tossing his boots on the bed and dropping her own books by mistake, cursing.

"For the first week, all meals will be brought to your room. This will give you and the student body time to adjust to your presence here," she said, collecting her books from his cot. "Starting tomorrow, you'll report to the second floor commons every morning at first call. There, I'll assess your SeeD knowledge, physical skills, and fulfill any basic requirements you may have to fill before the SeeD test."

Seifer stalked past her, dropping the rest of his newly acquired junk onto the tiny cot. "This is rich. I stil can't believe you're my fucking babysitter."

"And you **need** one! You haven't changed a bit!" shouted Quistis, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "You never thought the rules applied to you! You never could accept any help from anyone!"

"Help?" sneered Seifer. "I don't need help jumping off a cliff, and I sure as shit don't need any help in failing from someone who specializes in it."

In an instant, Seifer found himself pinned up against the white washed wall of the dormitory, with Quistis' arm at his neck, and her leg hooked under his. Standard SeeD neutralization move. A different time, he could have thrown her easily. But he was a shadow of his former self, and they both knew it.

Her breath swam in his ear even as his own humiliation coursed through his veins for the fiftieth time that day. Her voice was a furious whisper, and one that conveyed just how much more shit she was going to take.

Not much, by the sound of it.

"I don't know why you're back here, Almasy, but I don't trust you. I never have."

He jerked against her, and her other leg raised an inch, insinuating his groin. His eyes burned into hers, furious green slits that indicated a man pushed long past his border.

"And I've never liked you. Get the fuck off me." He spat back, his breath a warm, furious whisper against her cheek.

"Not until you listen to what I have to say." Insisted Quistis, jabbing her arm more insistently into his throat. "Because I'm only going to say it once."

"Talk all you want." He spat hoarsely. "The hell if I'm listening."

"Oh, you'll listen to me, because I don't have anything left to lose. I want this assignment as much as you want me on it. But you _will_ listen to me. I'm fully authorized to do what I have to, to make your comply, and I'm not afraid of you. Remember that. You'll be at the second floor commons tomorrow, or I'll drag you up there kicking and screaming myself. I'll be damned if you undermine me a second time." At that moment, her eyes put glaciers to shame, and felt his own blood run colder at the sight. "The sooner this is over, the happier we'll both be. So just do what you're told, for once in your miserable life."

She released him as suddenly as she had pounced on him, as if she'd realized at the same moment he did that the door had been open the entire time, lending some curious stares from the hallway. She muttered something under her breath as she stalked from the room, the door sliding shut behind her.

He coughed, sneering after her as he throat re-inflated. So, Trepe had developed a mean streak in his absence. He'd always pushed her, grated on her, annoyed the hell out of her, but she'd never pushed back quite that way before. It was refreshing, in the same masochistic vein he found others' hatred refreshing.

He chuckled bitterly to himself. Having Trepe supervise his progress was the same as having a mongoose watch over a snake's cage…or was it snake to a mongoose? Whatever. This whole idea was one big fucking mistake, and he'd known it every step of the way. He was a political obligation- he would never be a SeeD.

He'd never _be_ anything.

And now he was stuck here, locked up and baby-sat like a three year old with a former god complex.

"Fuck." He swore, driving his fist as hard as he could into the wall. The pain splintered across his hand, but it was an afterthought. Blood poured onto the surface from his newly split knuckles, a distant color, a pain that was no longer his. An insect spot on an indifferent windshield.

Aside from humiliation and a constant, stinging bitterness, he didn't feel much of anything anymore. At one point, it might have alarmed him, but the alcohol always numbed that concern.

And currently, he was too drunk on failure to care.

….

…

…

Quistis charged angrily down the dormitory hall, completely unaware of the path rapidly clearing in her furious charge.

Two years, and not a damned thing had changed. What the hell did Cid think he was doing, giving her such an assignment? What the hell were any of them thinking, letting an ex-sorceress' knight back into Garden, even one as fallen as Seifer?

And just what the hell was **she** thinking, accepting the offer?

She slashed her card through her door slot in a flurry of angry swipes, continuing her assault even when the green entry light had already lit. When the angry blurp of the door caught her attention, she stormed into the room, not bothering to turn on the lights. She stood in the center of her immaculately clean dormitory, too angry to sit down and too perturbed to go to lunch.

For some reason (that reason most likely garbed in a tattered gray trench coat), she'd lost her appetite.

As much as she thought she hated him, a part of her had sagged to see him again. She had thought of him idly in the past two years, (and more often than she wanted to admit), his image one preserved in vitality and confidence, if not of all it terribly mislead. She always assumed he had moved on to something else, and found herself hoping that it was a more productive task than his last endeavor.

The Seifer that had stood before her in Cid's office was one she could never have imagined. Or, perhaps, had never wanted to.

His eyes were tired, heavy, lit only by the stale contempt that had once fueled him away from Garden and now carried him back. His jaw was covered in a thick stubble, the once bright green of his eyes like

sea-polished bottle glass: faint and faded. His face was half-hidden by his now chin-length hair, the blonde strands stringed and dirty from lack of washing.

He was a broken man- bent over backwards on himself until it looked as if nothing kept his spine straight but bone itself. When she had measured him, she'd felt his ribs protruding in his chest, felt the circular knobs of his hips through his faded pants. What motherly instinct still clung to life in her compassionately shriveled soldier's body had wanted to feed him, to protect him from what she knew Garden was going to do to him. Or for what he would do to himself.

It was the soldier that had slammed him into the wall, every frustration, every humiliation and frustration she had suffered as an Instructor and as a student fueling her arm at his throat, pressed tight against his fragile jugular.

But it was her, just her, that had felt a hollow ache in her chest- an empty, echoing ache that understood his solitude.

Her eyes lit with a faint sadness as she remembered the feeling of his muscles bunching weakly beneath her grasp, his fury and embarrassment heating in his eyes as he brought his head up in an attempt to stare her down. It was a simple hold, one a younger Seifer would have broken easily. He was a once proud creature, now crippled with that pride. But then, he had always been deformed by it, the deformation evident in his words and his temper years ago. Only now, it had deformed him so wretchedly that it poured openly from his eyes, infected his physical bearing till he was no more than a shadow of what he had been.

She recognized at once the nakedness; the raw defeat peeled back by two years of what must have been an exhausting (if unsuccessful) search for some sort of completion. She knew it, because it was the same taint that stained the eyes she saw in the mirror every day of her life.

Now she saw it mirrored back at her through a pair of jade pools that she was supposed to despise above all else, but for some deficiency in herself, no longer could.  His ability to anger her, however, certainly hadn't diminished.

She could see it now. She was going to strangle him out of absolute exasperation, and there went any chances of reapplying for her Instructor's license. Seifer had never reflected well upon her, but then again, in many ways, neither had Squall. Her two best students, and she could claim only failure in both. And now, she had one back, the one that most likely hated her as much as he did her other former star pupil.

It had saddened her to see him that way now, even through her fury at his continued defiance.  But that had always been the nature of their relationship. She had always cared for him _through_ her anger, not in spite of it.

Could the morning get any worse? Could her life get any worse?

Swearing, she launched the books in her hand at the wall, watching impassively as the spine of one split upon impact then swearing as she realized which ones they were.

She spent the next hour trying to tape Xu's borrowed books back together.  
_  
Great. Not even a day, and she was already going crazy._


	5. Grudges, Nightmares, and Room Service

_Everybody loves stars _

_Everyone fell _

_Into her world she made here _

_Where everybody rates love _

_But I don't care _

_Cause_ _it's her world, she made me _

_You think you're half as good as me _

_The only thing you'll ever be _

_Is just a way for me to bleed _

_On this stage _

_Everybody loves stars_

_Everyone fell _

_Into her world she made here _

_Where innocence is taken _

_But I don't care _

_Cause_ _it's her world, she made me _

_Now she's old_

_She's been blessed _

_Take a bow _

_And confess _

_She threw it all away_

_My angel died that day _

_No one came _

_No one cared_

-Cold, Confession

Chapter 5

Seifer stared up at the pale ceiling of the SeeD dormitory, watching the hazy box of light that shone under his door flicker with footsteps. How long had he been lying in the bed? Was it morning yet?

He checked the standard-issued clock at his bedside. Not quite. In fact, not even close.

Since the light of Time Compression had faded from his mind, time itself had seemed to drag behind him like a half-rotten carcass. One that, every morning, felt suspiciously like his own.

Seifer blinked, letting his eyes settle back onto the wall. He was becoming a regular ceiling connoisseur.

Sighing, he swung his legs over the bed, shuffling into the bathroom and flicking on the light. He leaned forward, placing his hands on the small sink surrounded by a shiny little counter with four generic bars of soap stacked neatly on the side. Two small hand towels were in the top drawer and two large, almost paper-thin towels in the bottom. He swung open the mirrored medicine cabinet, revealing one bottle of aspirin with the seal still on.

Not nearly enough for an overdose, he through wryly. Cheap bastards.

His eyes scanned the second shelf, locating one razor package complete with cheap metal safety razor. Five paper cups. He grabbed the razor and a bar of soap from the sink and set them on the shelf in the shower. Another drawer revealed a bottle of plainly marked shampoo that smelled like turpentine.

Oh well. It couldn't make him smell any _worse_ at this point.

The jacket dropped at his feet, the rest of his soiled clothes quickly following suit. Naked, feeling the air tingle on his skin, he cast an appraising look into the mirror, the first full look in nearly two years. All of the mirrors in the hotel had been broken, whether of his doing or the last tenant's, he didn't remember.

The bone in his chest protruded from tightly stretched skin, tapering down to the subtle eclipse of ribs running down his scarred sides. His stomach sunk in like a deflated balloon, held up like a hollow tent by the two long, protruding knobs of his ribs. Dark bags clung to the bottoms of his eyes, cheekbones even sharper than usual in his now hollow face. He almost turned away from the disgusting sight in front of him. But maybe that was all the reflection had ever been.

Years ago, he had stood in front of a similar mirror, muscles had sculpted tightly against bone, boasting a broad chest and thick arms, and a knobby row of muscles that ran down his stomach like ripples. It was the result of years of lifting, pushing, of mag-enhanced vitality. He'd studied the mirror of his SeeD dorm every morning, appraising perfection, muscles repeating the mantra of his desire with every curl of the weights as he glanced at his reflection with a kind of lazy vanity.

_If he was strong enough, no one could deny him. _

He was a fool.

His mind was as weak then as his body was now, and it had made him Ultimecia's fucking puppet. A dancing dog on a leash, a muscle without a mind. Strong enough to follow, but too weak to lead.

He turned away, disgusted, and turned the shower jet on full force, muscles twitching as he gritted his teeth against the initial burn of the less than tepid water.

He unwrapped the soap and ran it across the bony valleys of his body, grimacing slightly as he glanced not-quite-healed cuts. Grey soap suds saturated with dirt, grime, and Hyne-knew what else swirled down the plastic drain at his feet as he scrubbed ferociously, desperately trying to get the stink off of him that seemed to have infected him the first time _she_ touched him.

He worked the shampoo into his hair with less than gentle fingers, squinting against the sting the froth caused in his already tired eyes.

He thought idly of Rinoa, of a happier time in Timber that seemed as far away as his childhood. Did he miss her? No. Had he loved her? Probably, in some young, fucked up way. She was dependant, fragile, and it had been his dream to protect those in need. He had wanted a princess to match his dream of being a knight, and she had wanted to fuck with her father, knowing a military brat would irritate him. Ironically, as it turned out, he couldn't even protect her from himself, and now it was Squall's arm she clung to, his strength she depended on.

_A faint remembrance of his sword at her neck, smelling the jasmin scent of her hair even as he told her to shut up and move along, into Adel's waiting jaws. _

Things had a funny way of working out. Or crumbling to shit. Either way.

Memories surfaced, clouded, screams and shouts swirling together like soap in the drain.

Grimacing, he wound the hot water nozzle as far left as it would go.

He'd burn it away.

…

Quistis picked at her salad, twisting the leaves of lettuce around the chicken squares until all the crouton pieces were equally coated in dressing, as was her usually somewhat anal-retentive habit. Usually, however, part of the tradition involved eating it.

She'd been picking at the same salad for the past hour, staring at the condensation of her bottle water and letting her mind wander blankly around the cafeteria, refusing to meet Squall's gaze, who, fortunately, seemed to be mostly avoiding hers as well. Rinoa seemed uncharacteristically downcast, her pretty brown eyes filled with discord as she hung close to Squall's arm. No doubt having a crazed ex-boyfriend who once tried to sacrifice her to an even more mad sorceress back in Garden was weighing somewhat on her mind. The raven-haired girl looked up, and cast her a sympathetic glance.

_So, she knew, too.  
_  
Quistis settled her eyes back onto her salad. She had never _hated_ Rinoa, exactly. She thought of the girl like a distant sister, and protected her as such, as they all did. Admired her the way someone admired flawless crystal. Resented her in random, variable bouts, perhaps. Wanted to put a few chips in her on occasion?

….maybe.

After all, Rinoa was everything that she wasn't-had everything she had ever wanted. People fell in love with her just for breathing. She was a fairy-tale princess living with her knight in the gallant castle of Balamb, pissing away happy years like fine wine. She was allowed to screw up, to let her guard down- after all, Squall could always be counted on to save her. Quistis had never had the luxury of letting her guard down- after all, who was waiting to catch _her_?

"I can't _believe_ they let him back in!" exclaimed Selphie, her pretty green eyes narrowed with anger. She stuck her fork into her chicken, twisting the metal in the soft, fleshy morsel as she stewed. Anger seemed out of place on her, almost comical, but Selphie's anger was justified. After all, it was her old home that Seifer had attacked.

Irvine shrugged, looking bored as he propped his long legs up onto the table, pushing his hat back to allow him a better view of the table. And, most likely, a better view of the two girls giggling at him from the salad bar. Leave it to Irvine, she thought. Although he and Selphie were an item, it didn't seem to stop various parts of his anatomy from wandering from time to time, creating the off again, on again, off again relationship that they were all starting to get used to. During the off times, public functions like lunch were a veritable hell.

Zell took a bite of his sandwich. "He doesn't look like much to me. Looks more like a walking skeleton than a threat. "

"Real nice, Zell." Replied Irvine, pushing the brim of his hat back down over his eyes as the giggling duo sauntered out of the cafeteria and Selphie cast him a sharp glance.

"Yeah well, so's he." Replied martial art's specialist, downing a glass of milk. "Or have you all forgotten how much of an ass he was?"

"Seifer's threat was never wholly concentrated in a physical sense, anyway." Said Squall quietly. "It's his attitude that is or isn't the threat now."

Quistis half-heartedly stabbed at a crouton.

"Well, HE worries me!" piped up Selphie, the fork clenched in her hand making an almost unrecognizable mess out of her chicken breast, scraping along the edges as she frowned. Quistis almost felt sorry for Selphie's plate.

"Yeah!" Said Zell vehemently. "They wouldn't let a ticking _time bomb_ run around these halls. I don't see why they gotta make an exception for that jerk."

Rinoa looked up from the table. "I don't know. Honestly, he just doesn't _seem_ like the same person anymore."

_Ha_, thought Quistis to herself, stabbing the hardened bread in half. **_You_**_ supervise him, then._

Selphie glanced over at Rinoa. "How can you be so sure?"

"The Sorceress stuff…well, it messes with your mind." The young sorceress shrugged. "I'm not sure. I just don't _feel_ the same aura around him any more. Maybe people change. Maybe even Seifer."

Quistis resisted a snort. It was easy to give the benefit of the doubt from a safe distance, especially a distance supplied by Squall's protective arm.

_Jealous, Quistis?_

Gritting her teeth, she ignored the little voice and went to work on another helpless crouton. This one flew across the lunch table, hitting a junior classman in the back of the head. Quistis quickly looked the other way as the cadet glanced around, perplexed and holding his neck.

Selphie, meanwhile, glared over at her boyfriend, whose lack of conversation clearly bothered her. "Irvy, what do _you_ think?" she asked, poking him with her newest three-pronged weapon.

"I dunno, Selph. If what they say about Matron is true, seems kinda unfair to judge Seifer along a different vein." He said up, draping his legs under the table. "I think people should just leave the guy alone. Judghing from the look of it, I think he's prob'ly done enough to himself already."

Selphie's brows knit together in an almost cute frown as she slammed the fork into the table. "Well, **I** don't!" she huffed, obviously displeased at her significant other's difference of opinion.

Quistis, however, glanced up from her salad, cocking her head. Irvine's depth surprised her from time to time.

Did that mean she agreed with him? She blinked the idea away. Seifer Almasy was an assignment, a mission. She wasn't going to get involved in his one-man guilt party.

Squall shifted, speaking up for the second time during the entire lunch. It had to be a record. "Cid's decided to give him a second change, for whatever reason. I think we should all try to go along with it. I don't think he'll last long, anyway."

At that, Quistis' gaze traveled sharply upward, her salad toss momentarily halted as she gave Squall his second dirty look for the day.

_Right._ _Endorse Cid's political agenda, Leonhart. Give the man a second chance. Just as long as _**you**_ don't have to give it to him, right?_

Squall returned her gaze, his expression a flicker of something unreadable.

As always.

She swore sometimes, that, somewhere, in a cave off of some distant island, Squall had found and Junctioned some extremely rare Ambiguous materia, awarding him the ability to be more indefinite than anyone else on the planet. Frustrated, she returned to the mutilation of her salad.

Subtly, Irvine steered them into a conversation about the coming winter season, which instantly got Selphie on a tirade about a possible Winter Festival. Planning parties was like air to the bubbly young woman, it seemed, and Selphie was never short-winded. At any rate, Quistis was grateful for the change in subject. The mention of Seifer's name caused an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach, one akin to bile.

Her mind sought order, as it always did, trying to lay out a basic, organized plan for a difficult task. With Seifer, however, there had never been any such thing as order. He avoided every single strategy she'd ever attempted to execute as his Instructor, often turning her own attempts back on her in various humiliating episodes that she was still trying to forget. He rejected orders, refused help, and scoffed openly at any overtures she made to gain an understanding with him, much less any authority as his instructor.

He was impossible.

Something caught her eye. "Earth to Quisty. Yo, anybody home?"

She blinked, leaning back looking into Zell's worried gaze as he swiped his hand across her line of vision.

"I'm here." She mumbled, renewing her perpetual salad toss.

Selphie's green eyes lit with worry. "Why aren'tcha eating, Quisty? You've been awful quiet today."

Quistis set down the fork, pushing her chair back from the table. She managed a thin smile. "Just not hungry, I suppose. I'll see you all later." The table watched, all but two confused, as their friend proceeded to walk back into line. She loaded up a tray with a sandwich, an apple, a plate of noodles, two hot dogs, and two glasses of water, then exited the cafeteria.

Selphie frowned. "Ooookay, that made nooooo sense…"

Zell turned around, looking miffed. "No kidding! Those guys just told me they were out of hot dogs!"

…

Shifting the tray in her hands, Quistis rapped on the sliding door with the toe of her boot for the second time in the last five minutes. She'd had to shoo a group of curiosity seekers from the door upon her arrival, which consisted mainly of giggling girls. All of Garden had received a memo about Seifer's arrival, and although quite a few were upset, most were simply inquisitive. In the past, he would have been ripped apart at the doors.

Amazing, the difference two years could make.

It boded well for Seifer, also, that there was a division in the student body about whether he was guilty or not. The SeeDs were mostly united against them, while the lower ranks generally thought of him as a victim. The younger students, who had entered Garden after the fiasco, generally saw Seifer as a curiosity more than anything else.

If he didn't answer the door in five minutes, she would let him go hungry. She was surprised she'd waited this long, although really, she admitted, there was nothing else actually scheduled for the day. All her paperwork was finished, there were currently no mission briefings, and the books she had borrowed from Xu had suddenly lost appeal.

Currently, Seifer's well-being was her most pressing business, and she wasn't quite sure how to feel about that.

She aimed another good kick at the door, shifting the contents of the tray in to balance on her right hip as she brushed a lock of hair out of eye, reaching up for the com button.

The door slid open, and in her surprise, she nearly lost her grip on the tray. The water lapped up against the sides, spilling onto her blouse before she could right the tray.

"Oh, crap-"

Green eyes looked down at her, narrowing upon recognition. "The hell do you want?" he spat, glaring at the other hallway traffic and trying to avoid looking at the way the water fanned out across her blouse.

Fucking hormones. It was _Trepe_, for Hyne's sake, the human ice machine.

Quistis' mouth tightened as she looked up at Seifer. He was dressed in the standard black shorts and a white tank top that did little to hide his somewhat sunken stomach. It was almost painful to look, but she knew Seifer despised pity, and she still wasn't entirely convinced that he deserved any. Quickly shaking herself out of it, she addressed his previous question in as flippant a manner as she could muster.

"A million gil." Replied Quistis sarcastically. "Think this meal is worth it?"

Seifer glared at her, running his tongue over the parched groove of his lower lip. She had _no_ idea.

Silence passed between them, and Quistis shifted her feet, glancing down the hallway before meeting his gaze head on. "Are you going to let me in?"

His demeanor relaxed the slightest fraction as he stepped back to allow her in. "Why? What are you going to do, shove it down my throat?"

_I'd thought about it._

Quistis narrowed her eyes as she set the tray down on his nightstand. "Are the words 'thank you' a part of your vocabulary?"

"You're not exactly doing this out of the kindness of your heart, Trepe, and we both know it," replied Seifer, picking his discarded towel off the floor and tossing it onto desk chair on the other side of the room, knocking a pencil cup off of the desk in the process. It shattered- he ignored it. "I'm an obligation to you the same as everyone else in this fucking place."

She turned to him, hands on her hips as the tray clattered the rest of the way down. "Do you want the food, or not?"

His mouth was watering to the point of overflow, but he feigned disinterest. "Is it poisoned?" he quipped.

"Unless the cafeteria staff has suddenly taken a great disliking to the student body in general, I think you're pretty safe." She replied, rolling her eyes.

Seifer took a seat on the chair, languorously folding his legs up on the bed. "It's not the manufacturing I'm worried about," he muttered. "It's the _transfer_."

Quistis threw out her arms in exasperation. "Seifer, you have to trust _someone_-"

"And I'm still at a loss as to why that should be you." He muttered.

Quistis resisted a strong urge to pour the tray's contents onto his head and storm out the door. "I don't know why you feel the need to be alone, even now. Didn't your experience-"

"Oh, here it comes. Advice. And I'd wager to guess that it's the same tired old shit you tried to feed everybody when we were kids, trying to play mom." He chuckled, the sound serrated further by the icy gleam in his eyes as he jumped to his feet, body mimicking his former haughty polish with surprising pompous precision. There was a sudden anger in him now, one she couldn't quite place.

"Don't think you know anything about my experience. You're just like the rest of them, you know that? You don't know _anything_ about me! You never did! And just because you're doing this charity help- out-the-fallen-bullshit doesn't make us anything but obligations. It sure as shit doesn't make us friends, and it never will. Just remember that."

Something flashed in her eyes, but it was gone just as quickly as it had come. It looked suspiciously like hurt, but that was impossible.

The woman didn't hurt. Hell, there were times he'd wondered if she felt anything at all.

"How's being an asshole working out for you?" spat Quistis, angry now. "Getting you anywhere?"

He cocked his head to the side, an almost frighteningly distant look to his face. "Obviously not. I'm here with you, aren't I?"

Back to the old games.

_You push my buttons. _

_I'll push yours._

He advanced on her, further incensed by the fact that she didn't have the sense to back away. She was _supposed_ to be scared of him, damnit!

"What the hell do you care who's in charge of you? It's never made any difference to you before!" she whispered furiously.

"I don't!" shouted Seifer, throwing out his arms. "I don't give a fucking shit! So quit pretending to care about me, when the only thing **you** give a shit about is **you**!"

There was that look again, a flash of…something, before her icy shields slammed back into place. Just like the old Trepe- vulnerable and impenetrable all at once. "Let's get this straight. I don't want this assignment any more than you want me on it. The only thing I care about is your attendance tomorrow. Just…show up for once in your damned life."

Going, going, gone. The retreat of her footsteps sounded oddly hollow to him. _That's right, Trepe. Leave. Now you've got the idea_.

It was, apparently, an easy idea to catch on to. Everyone else had done it.

Fighting with her, even as kids, had always awakened something in him, some distant spark that enjoyed her fiery, if not inexperienced, banter, refreshed by the idea that there was someone else out there as stubborn as he was as much as the fact that someone was paying attention to him. But something about her now was defeated, tired, wilted in a way he didn't understand. Never before had she looked so vulnerable, so sad. _Over him?__  
_  
Ha. Impossible.

He watched her retreating back with distain. Screw it. He didn't have the time or the energy to waste on other people's problems, especially hers. The woman gave new meaning to the term 'repressed'.

He focused his attention on the tray of food that had been so carefully slammed onto his nightstand. Closing his eyes, he took a long gulp of water, draining half the glass. Wetting his lips and pausing for breath, he finished it. The second glass was gone in as many gulps. The hot dogs went down next, and he nearly choked trying to down the sandwich directly after. The food was almost alien on his tongue. He had nearly forgotten how food not diluted with gin could taste. His tongue nearly prickled at the sensation, taste buds awakening for the first time in months. How strange it felt to have solid food sliding down his throat into his stomach, which quivered at the new arrival.

He gripped his stomach. It wasn't going to stay down for long. It was just too much food for a stomach used to gin and tonic for breakfast, a handful of whatever slop was within easy reach for lunch, and a sensible dinner of a bottle of brandy.

The Alcoholic's Diet Plan was now backfiring on him.

His stomach rumbled. "Shit." He breathed.

He spent the next three hours over the toilet, vomiting his former victual salvation like it was poison. It was an odd feeling, he thought, leaning over the white, shining rim of the toilet, actually vomiting _food_ for once.

Afterwards, tired, shaking, he collapsed on his bed, too tired to move around the loose spring in the mattress that eagerly embedded itself in his arm.

_He was kneeling on a wooden chair of in a sunlit kitchen, lining a row of silver soldiers along the windowpane. Guns pointed to the sun, pewter eyes trained on the afternoon rays. Ready. Waiting. Unbreakable and unmeltable…supposedly. He'd already busted the head off of his General, mostly by mistake. _

_The kitchen smelled of the wildflowers in the jelly glass on the table, and the warm smell of oatmeal. And her. He sensed her behind him, felt gentle hands on his shoulders as her lilac scent calmed his unnaturally preoccupied young mind. _

_"What are you making, little Seifer?" _

_"An army.__ To protect you." He felt her smile behind him, felt her hands tighten on his shoulders, nails scoring his flesh. The light outside dimmed to darkness. His eyes widened. _

_Her voice crackled, like static fading in and out along the whorl of his small ear. "Good little boy. Now_**, destroy them all**_." _

_He shut his eyes, trying to clear the image, but when he opened them, he was nearly blinded. _

_He was holding Hyperion, and the sun glinted so brightly off the blade it was almost difficult to see. Just as suddenly, the silver point ran slick with blood, the warmth reaching like fire up his arm even as the blade ran clean again. Crimson, white, golden, silver colors ran, and with it voices untangled themselves in his brain, unraveling into a collage of insanity- _

_A madness__ he had painted himself behind the whites of his eyes. _

_"Seifer, stop climbing those trees.__ You're going to break something." _

_Edea__, smiling as she wiped a smudge of dirt from his face, telling him to be more careful. She always worried about his climbing obsessions, how he would ignore the thinning branches of the tops of the trees just to get higher than the others. _

_Edea__, pressing a wet cloth to his cheek, wiping away the scrape. "My little boy," she smiled, cradling his head gently in her hands. _

_The picture blurred, colors twisting violently in front of his eyes. Ultimecia now, running her nails along his cheeks, eyes glittering with malice as her lips curved in triumph. _

_"My little puppet…" _

_He blinked, his heart skipping a beat as he looked around him. _

_Balamb.__ The emerald green ran together with the ocean, swirling, the colors of her landscape becoming as ethereal as Hyperion's watercolor blade. _

_Never be a SeeD... _

_He jerked back, the tendons on his arms snapped back by some unseen force. Hyperion was wrenched away, the sword spiraling up to land point down in the grass. Crimson spilt from the wound, a thick, viscous red that began to turn the grass black. _

_Black, black, black…_

**_Blink_**_. _

_Gold.__ A flaxen wave that teased his eyes as it darted through the deep fields, springing up spores as young, chubby hands batted the thick, pollen- swelled heads of the field flowers. Laughter bubbled up in his throat, effervescing into the cloudless blue of the sky above. _

_When had he ever laughed like that? As a child? Had he laughed like that as a child? _

_Ever?_

_He reached out, trying to grasp the golden silk trail in front of him, and was just as suddenly jerked back. His fingers clasped nothing. _

_He was alone. _

_He watched with terror as the clouds drew together, the sunlight receding back from the soft emerald grass like a stage gone dim. The gold was gone. The field's colors blurred once again, and now, his hands were filled with blood. _

_Shaking._

**Weak**_._

_He raised his bloodstained fingers to his ears in an attempt to blot out the sound of his own scream, but felt a strange resistance in his limbs. With horror, he looked down as he realized, bewilderingly, that his movements were not his own. Silver chords protruded from his arms, his legs, his neck, rising up like the strings of some ethereal kite into the rapidly darkening sky. Laughter poured down like rain, the terrible sting of mockery in his eyes. Everything he would never be all loomed above him, unseen, impossible. And the voice. _

**Her voice.**

_"My little puppet.__ Dance for me." That same lilting voice, calling him back into the darkness. The chords tugged at his body, yanking him up, and the pain was terrible and beautiful-. _

_As terrible as when he had failed to please his mistress, and as beautiful as when she had smiled that same dark, pleased smile, welcoming him into her arms and into her body, but it wasn't her body, it was- _

_He screamed out as the ground swayed beneath him, arms and legs stretched taut, muscle ripping under the force. Tendons splintered like candy ropes under the force, bones broke like twigs, his skin torn open, bleeding- _

_He twisted against the strings that held him up, watching Hyperion swing below like lost salvation. He stretched, reaching hard for the sword with every ounce of left strength left in him. _

_Too fucking weak._

_He remembered those words. He had spoken them years ago, standing in the detention room, watching the lights play on his reflection in the observation mirror. Green eyes cut to narrow slits, appraising the vessel for his future greatness, knowing the people on the other side of the two- sided mirror saw only failure. Blood ran from his lips, eyes blackened from fighting. He couldn't say even now why he had smashed the mirror with the nearest chair, earning himself another week in detention. _

_Or who exactly he had been talking to.__ The stupid fucks on the other end of the mirror, or the weakling idiot in front of it. _

_He reached again, and watched with amazement as Hyperion's blade dislodged itself from the bloody field to spiral up like a feather caught in a whirlwind towards his outstretched hand. The colors blurred again, and he had to fight to keep his eyes on the blade that dangled in front of him, taunting him. Still too far away. _

_He closed his eyes, biting down hard on inside of his cheek as another wave of agony spilled over him. _

_"Too weak-" _

_"Never be a SeeD-" _

_"I am disgraced-" _

_When his eyes flickered open the sword was in his hand, handle bright, as unmarred as the day it was first handed to him. Full of promises. Full of purpose. _

_"You want this?" mocked the voice above him as he grasped the sword's cold handle, glaring up into the abyss. A distant chuckle. "Go ahead. You'll never survive the fall." _

_Filled with fury, he hacked at the cords, screaming as his blood poured openly from the severed strings. _

_It felt like he was hacking away at his own soul. _

_"Hurts, doesn't it?" _

_His own voice?__ Or hers? _

_He looked up at the last cord holding him, the thick silver thread snaking up into hellish sky above. "Why stop now?" soothed the voice. "You're so close to the top. I can take you even higher.." he saw again a flash of eyes poisoned by power, of rose-red lips spinning dreams like black widow web around his chest. Wicked nails scrawling down his naked chest, and promises whispered in his ear. Such beautiful blindness: dreams...power…glory...a chance to show them...show her.. _

_Show who?_

_Show _**mother**_- _

_He blinked, and the vision was gone, and the legacy left to him was nothing but a burning, broken field, a fruitless meadow marred by his own crooked plow. That was the true dream of the sorceress, the vision that had come so pleasantly packaged. Like a fool, like a child, he had ripped all that away, and found nothing but destruction. _

**His own.**

_Closing his eyes, he cut the last of the string, and he was free, so free and so scared- _

_So far down, and his was plummeting, a scream trapped in his throat-_

_He saw with horror the world below rising up like a dark wave, fangs bloodied with fire opened wide to swallow him whole-  
_  
He woke up bathed in sweat, a scream dying on his lips as he bolted up in bed, slamming his head against the wooden backboard as he fell back. The sheets were twisted around his body like a thin white vine, choking him.

He scrambled off the cot, falling to his hands and knees, shiny with sweat and breathing hard, choking back the bile lodged in his throat. His muscles quivered hands spread out on the now sweat-slick floor as he glared down at the floor, trying to get a bearing on something, anything-

He stared at the distant gleam of the tile, the waxy surface bright enough to reflect the broken emerald of his eyes, lips twisted in pain. The gleam was twisted, ethereal, and the room was silent enough to magnify the sound of his breathing and the trembling thunder of his heart. Salty warmth filled his mouth, and turning his head, he spit the blood from his chewed cheeks.

**That** was real. His stomach stirred back to life- the raw, bile-burned organ awakened by the new stress coursing through his veins and he knew he was going to be sick again. He got to his feet, half crawling to the bathroom as he heaved air into the basin, half expecting to have some horrendous object to have metastasized in his stomach in his while he slept.

When the contractions ceased, he slid bonelessly to the floor, gasping for breath against the cool linoleum tile.

Silently, he simultaneously cursed and thanked Hyne.

Thankful that no one had seen him fall.

Cursing that no arms were ever there to catch him.


	6. Haircuts and Relearning Old Lessons

_One day, one night, one moment _

_My dreams could be tomorrow _

_One step, one fall, one falter _

_East or west _

_Over earth or by ocean _

_One way to be my journey _

_This way could be my Book of Days_

_... No day, no night, no moment _

_Can hold me back from trying _

_I'll flag, I'll fall, I'll falter _

_I'll find my day may be Far and Away _

_Far and Away_

-Enya, Book of Days

Chapter 6

Quistis opened her eyes just as the alarm clock at her beside switched its green cardslots of numbers to a hazy six o' clock. Squinting, she banged her palm against the small device before it could begin its wretched beeping.

She was so used to getting up at six, that, really, she no longer needed an alarm clock. Her body was perfectly timed to her schedule, and had been since her time at Garden. Still, one liked to be prepared. Or anal, as Selphie would probably call it.

Saturday.

Quistis yawned as she got to her feet, running an absent hand through her hair as she groped for her glasses on the nightstand.

Saturday…nothing pressing to do…she could visit Balamb with Selphie for some overdue shopping…perhaps have lunch on the wharf…a clam chowder a fancy coffee at Christina's…

Her smile disappeared as she realized what actually lay in store for the day. It was Saturday, and she had both a review It was as if two years hadn't changed at all, and here she was again, dreading another confrontation with her most problematic student.

Quickly, she went about her morning routine, which consisted of fifty push-ups and fifty sit-ups, followed by a bottle of water and a quick shower. She checked her e-mail as she ironed her blouse and skirt, then, clip between her teeth, combed and twisted her hair into submission. It was a routine that she had developed since her admission to Garden- the discipline was what had made her SeeD. Most days, it was also what kept her sane.

Carefully balancing the materials she had chosen to go through with him that day, she tucked a pen behind her ear and hurried out the door, praying to whoever or whatever was listening for patience.

She was going to need it.

Ten minutes later, she arrived at the second floor commons room, a little flustered and a little late. She had run into a multitude of people in the hall, mostly old students (and perhaps, old Treppies as well), and literally into Zell, who was making a beeline for the cafeteria after hearing the rumor that blueberry pancakes were being served.

She had ended up on her backside, papers spilled out in the four directions of the hall, looking up into Zell's worried face between locks of still- damp hair.

He apologized profusely, scrambling to pick up the fallen papers like a small monkey gathering change at a fair. Energy personified. She swore, if Zell and Selphie ever got together, their children would never sleep.

Quistis, still half-asleep, had accepted his frantic apology and continued on her way, slightly tousled and now slightly late. She stopped in the Instructor's lounge, slipping in quietly to steal a cup of coffee. The sludge would never be missed.

She frowned at the dark room, whose door lay half ajar. So, Seifer wasn't even here yet, which meant he was going to be even later than she already was. Anger rousing her a little, she nudged the door open and strode into the room, setting her papers down on the larger desk at the front. Cid was allowing her to use her old classroom to get Seifer back up to speed…the irony did not escape her.

Dim morning light filtered across half the room from the tiny window on the left side, spilling out onto the oiled wood desks and catching the grooves of the newly mopped tile like pale water. Quistis stood, enjoying the quietness of the morning, as she often had as an Instructor.

She let her hair down, combing it with her fingers before tying it back up again in neat fashion as she stared wistfully at the darkened lines of desks before her. If she squinted, she could see her classroom again, could see the faces of her students staring eagerly out at her. She smiled to herself. Perhaps she was being a bit wistful there…eager was a bit of an overstatement.

Still, some were excited to learn- young, impressionable minds that yearned to make a difference in the world. Their difference. She crossed her arms, smiling a little as she remembered standing at the board...

Grading papers, filling out lesson plans the night before-

Helping students, the elated feeling she received from their looks of understanding-

Repeatedly babysitting the two in the back of the room-

She frowned. There was not a day that went by that she didn't deal with some sort of disciplinary problem with one of them. Mostly though, it had been the _green_-eyed problem in the back, smirk knowing and unyielding, legs propped up on his desk like he owned the classroom.

What pissed her off was that half the time he'd seemed more in control of it than she was.

Glaring at the memory, she procured a folder from the now messy stack of papers she'd grabbed this morning. She'd requested his file pulled, and though it was still sticky with legal tape, Xu had ordered it released. Now she stared at it, mind running over the pages, searching between the lines for the biological recipe that had made Seifer Almasy.

_Name: Almasy, Seifer _

_Age of admittance: 11_

_Birthdate__: January 24th _

_Parents: Jacon and Arista Almasy: status, deceased_

_Siblings: none_

_Blood type: O positive _

_Allergies: none listed _

_Allergies to medications: none listed _

_Medical conditions: none _

_Weapon: Standard issue Gunblade, item number 016784934, modified design _

_Medical History: Treatment thirteen years prior for broken femur. Fracture has since healed completely. Treatment Lyr3: September 3rd for laceration five inches in length on forehead: treatment denied. Medical history before age 7 not released, property of Edea Kramer. _

_Notes: Almasy is a talented but entirely unmotivated individual with SeeD capacity but not determination or discipline. He has an innate problem with authority and lacks/or ignores basic social conventions and social graces-"  
_  
Quistis snapped the file shut. There was nothing in the file but a stack of grievances filed against him for crimes committed during the Sorceress War, and she had witnessed most of those firsthand. The rest of the report she had written herself. Even then, she'd been wrong about him. Seifer Almasy was not unmotivated. Just the opposite.

Quite driven…_in the completely wrong direction. _

Seifer had been a problematic student from day one. He never handed in assignments, rarely volunteered in class, and instead spent every moment of it trying to torment the dark-haired boy next to him. Or others, as it suited him. He had a kind of lazy distain about him, and aside from Rajin and Fujin, did not interact well with most of his other classmates. Dimly, she remembered her own interactions with her former pupil.

_"Seifer, sit down-"_

_"Seifer, where is your assignment-"_

_"Seifer, please be quiet-"_

_"Seifer, leave Squall alone-" _

She sighed. Seifer had never reflected well on her. He was her biggest failure as not only as an Instructor, but as a SeeD.

Then again, after awhile, she had _stopped_ looking for the good in him. They all had.

And perhaps, after awhile, he had as well.

She leaned back against the heavy mahogany desk in the front, crossing her legs at the ankles as she tested the warmth of the coffee against her lips.

"Good morning, Instructor."

Jolting to her feet, she spit coffee everywhere. A low chuckle followed in the darkness.

Her cheeks burned. She felt like a guilty teenager caught with one of her mother's sticky-sweet romance novels, sitting in here dancing with ghosts.

And by _him_, no less.

"Seifer," she mused, darkly. "I do believe this is the first time you have ever been early for my class."

"First time for everything." He replied. A pause. "Brings back memories, doesn't it?"

Her throat felt unexplainably dry. "Excuse me?"

"I _said_, it brings back memories." He repeated.

She cleared her throat. "Not really." She lied.

Another pause. Silence between them had never been comfortable or prosaic. It was like a dragonfly on a dark water skin, fish lurking beneath-never predictable.

"You gonna turn on the lights, Instructor, or is this a nocturnal drill?"

She reluctantly flicked the switch, both of them squinting as the florescent light invaded the eyes the way an onion invades the nose- all tingling, sharp sensation. He back sat in the farthest desk, legs propped up in his usual fashion, the movement denied some of his former arrogant grace by the slightly submissive slouch of his back.

Surprisingly, he had dressed in uniform, which fit a little loosely in the shoulders. His hair was pulled back, giving the lean-ness of his face an almost savage quality. Then again, those eyes would look disquieting on anyone.

"So." He began, tone lingering between impatience and discomfort.

"So." She repeated, fumbling for her cover.

Both struggled to remember the way of things.

It was an old dance they had done, the waltz of an instructor and her problematic student. But things were different now, and neither knew the new steps. She was a changed, bitter woman without a much desired direction, and he an old, tired rebel without a cause. The dancers had changed, even if the music hadn't.

She moved to the desk, trying to make some semblance of order out of her now ruffled papers. She procured a small red book, a large, wire-bound manual, and a larger black paperback. "Guardian Forces and Pros and Cons and Basic SeeD Procedure. This is a new one. The large black paperback is a field procedure manual, and deals with beginner medical procedure and communication operatives. I want you to have them all read by the end of the week."

A sour look crossed his face as he folded his arms. "What's the point? I already learned this shit."

So much for _civility_.

Her eyes narrowed in response. "No, you didn't. I was your Instructor, remember?"

He sneered. "How could I forget? 'Seifer, don't touch Squall.' 'Seifer, where's your paper on Junctioning?' 'Seifer, you're _breathing_ too loud.'" He did an admirable impression, and Quistis would have been inclined to laugh if she were not the one being imitated.

"I learned _so_ much." He snarled. "Fuck, I spent more time in the Detention room than I ever did in your shitty class."

She crossed her arms. "It isn't _my_ fault you put more time into inflating your ego than learning your studies."

"As an Instructor, isn't it your job to _inspire_ your students to learn?" he quipped. "You did a piss poor job with me."

"I couldn't have inspired you to learn with a cattle prod." Scoffed Quistis. "From the first day of my class, you considered it beneath you."

"It was." His sneer shortened a fraction. "Where the hell _is_ your class, anyway? Garden's in a sorry situation if I'm the only new student."

She cast an unflinching gaze at him. "I don't have a class anymore. I'm no longer an Instructor." The words were automatic, dulled by practice. Still, he didn't miss the gleam in her eye, the cold catch in her voice.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to talk about it with _you_." She bristled. _Especially_ with you, she added silently.

"Yeah, fine, whatever. I don't give a shit." He held up his hand. "I still don't see how this whole-" he gestured at her, "-thing, is supposed to help me make SeeD."

"You lack basic knowledge of standard procedure." She replied. _Not to mention respect for it_, she added silently. "It's a necessary qualification, and the main reason you never became SeeD in the first place."

"Gee," came the dark response. "And here I thought it was because I was the asshole nobody liked."

"Well, your attitude certainly didn't do you any favors." Replied Quistis evenly.

He glared at her.

"Part of becoming a SeeD involves lowering yourself to the semantics, the building blocks. It isn't all just action. Procedure is what makes it a mission, not just a politically inspired hack job." She continued. "It requires discipline, something you always pushed off. **That's** why you're not SeeD."

Seifer sighed. "Just gimme the damned books." She handed them over, then folded her hands.

A small victory. She'd be content with that, for now.

"I suppose that's it for today," she said, checking over her notes. "Just read the books, and we'll start discussing them tomorrow. I'll answer any questions you may have,"

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Great. I feel like I'm in a fucking book club. Are we going to discuss our feelings, too? Get some fucking _scones_ or something?"

Quistis bit back a smirk at the thought of having a tea party with Seifer Almasy. She'd probably brain him with the teapot.

"It probably wouldn't hurt to talk about the things that have happened to you, Seifer." She said, her tone quickly serious. "I could recommend Sara, Garden's counselor-"

The ex-knight's jaw tightened, and she sensed instantly that she had once again stepped back out onto thin ice. "Nothing _happened_ to me," he spat.

"Seifer-"

His look stopped her. Quistis sighed, letting the rest of her sentence escape in a loud whoosh of breath.

Why did it always come to this?

She quickly moved on to a different subject. "Junction some basic magic for tomorrow.  We'll meet in the private room next to the Training Center, 1A. You'll have clearance to stock at least 25 spell slots." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "And I want your weapon taped for friendly combat."

"Yeah, friendly my _ass_," muttered Seifer, rolling his eyes as he walked past her, the door shutting behind him.

Quistis put her hands to her temples. Whoever said progress was slow had never met Seifer Almasy.

…

"_Guardian Forces have been around since, apparently, the first documentation of man's artistic expression. Mythical paintings done in berry residue and pounded clay depict massive spirits arising from human form, reflection on GF forces in both early human spiritual and daily existence. The first recorded documentation seems to have occurred in the far south, in small, compact caves near the base of __Mount_ _Paliciar__, in the form of a fiery, horned beast known today as Ifrit."  
_  
Seifer yawned as he braced himself in his chair, trying to ease the kinks in his spine. He was only on the second chapter of "Guardian Forces, Pros and Cons", and the damned book was at least eighteen chapters long. Stifling a yawn, he flipped back to his last page and began reading again.

_Modern today society utilizes GF forces both for their amazing abilities and for the enhanced physicality that seems to occur from the symbiosis between organisms. However, lengthy exposure to GF usage causes substantial memory loss, and, in severe cases, has shown to cause permanent damage to the hypothalamus as well. These recent scientific findings beg the question, is the relationship truly one of symbiosis?" _

_Dr. Thurid Glasser, representative of Timber's Biotec Development Plant, had this to say-"_

Seifer set down the book, glaring at it for being boring as hell as he pushed his hair out of his eyes. Damned hair. It was worse than a girl's. Vaguely, he remembered seeing a pair of scissors in the desk drawer of his beside table, along with a couple of chewed pencils from the last occupant.

He got up, stretching, and snatched the pair of somewhat rusted scissors from the drawer. He ran his thumb across the blade to test the sharpness, and was rewarded with the scissor version of a paper cut.

"Son of a _bitch_." He accused the scissors.

A knock came at the door.

"Son of a bitch," he repeated, although this time he had no idea what it was swearing at.

It was Quistis' face that greeted him. He was getting less surprised to see it.

"Yeah?" he asked. She turned to him, holding up a card key.

"This is your clearance card to retrieve all the necessary spells, and the safety tape for Hyperion. You might want to equip a few Cures." She set the card down on the desk, probably looking for suicide notes or something. "Meet me in the Training Center room at the second bell."

"Fine, whatever." He shuffled back to the bed, still gripping the scissors. She chose not to remind him of his likeness to Squall at that moment.

"Go to the equipment room tomorrow as soon as the first bell sounds. They should be open, and it'll give you time to equip everything, warm up a little." She watched, frowning, as Seifer picked up what looked to be a rusty scissors and loosen the tie around his hair.

"Yeah, fine." He grumbled.

Quistis sighed as she watched Seifer grab a fistful of hair and begin to hack at it with the scissors, resisting the urge to snatch the scissors away from him before he cut his own scalp. "How are the books?"

"Boring as hell." He replied, hacking off a rather large chunk of hair at a crooked angle and watching disinterestedly as it floated to the floor. "Are those books part of a suicide encouragement program? Because with every page, I feel more like killing myself."

"Give me that." She ordered, reaching over to snatch the scissors from him.

"What do you care if I look like shit?' came the caustic reply as he jerked his hand away.

"I don't. Just give me the scissors before you scalp yourself with it."

"Why, so you can do it?" he asked, and if she wasn't mistaken, there was an almost lilting tone to his voice.

She glared at him, silently holding out her hand.

Grumbling, he handed her the item as she reached down to collect a dirty shirt to drape around his shoulders. She stood in front of him, between his open knees.

"Hold out your hands."

Silently, to her surprise, he did as she asked. She combed down the strands with her fingers, then snipped large chunks off symmetrically along the sides as straight as she could.

"This'd be great revenge you know," he muttered. "Making me look like shit." He spit out a spray of clippings that had landed on his lips while talking.

She just chuckled. "If I wanted revenge, Seifer, I wouldn't bother cutting your hair at all. You already look like a mutt. Besides, I have to look at you every day. I wouldn't want to make your look worse, if that's even possible."

"Gee, thanks."

_Snip, snip._

She chuckled, and he found the sound strangely pleasant. It reminded him of a wind chime that had hung over the orphanage door when they were younger. He often threw pebbles at it just to hear the hollow bells clink against each other until Matron came out and scolded him. He glanced up at Quistis, who was biting her lip, tilting her head to one side as she squinted at a chunk of hair.

The last woman he'd let this close with a metal object was an indiscretion. He'd wound up with a knife wound that just missed a kidney.

The sound of the scissors, however, was almost soothing. It reminded him of his childhood, sitting in the kitchen on a wobbly stool while Edea cut his hair. After the monthly haircut, there was always a platter of warm chocolate chip cookies waiting for them.

So many memories………………all slipped through his fingers like sand until all he was left with was the shitty present.

_Snip, snip.__  
_  
Seifer sighed and watched through half-closed lids as another wet chunk of hair fell into his hands. Those times were long gone, and they were far from untainted children.

His head was feeling lighter already, and the mass of hair slowly accumulated into a large pile in his palms.

The snipping stopped, and he heard a scraping sound in the far corner of the room. "What are you doing?"

"Here. Drop your hands." Dimly, he could see a wastebasket beneath them. He did.

_Snip, snip.__  
_  
"How does it feel, being back?" she asked, no doubt trying to make idle conversation, the way most people did around him.

Who the hell was he kidding? No one else even talked to him around here.

He snorted. "Let's see. I'm a walking liability, not to mention Cid's political obligatory equalizer. There's only a handful out of thousands that actually don't care that I'm here, and the other majority either want me dead or gone or both in any order. Offhand, I'd say that it feels great to be back."

The scissors paused. "Sorry. Stupid question."

"Tch. No shit."

_Snip snip._

He heard her sigh above him. "You know, not everyone wants you to fail."

"Name one person."

A long pause. "I don't, Seifer."

He had no idea how to respond to that, but the words quickened his heart, just a little, lifting it from the pit of his stomach even as he looked up at her with suspicion, even as anger burned in him for her kindness.

_And just what the hell was this feeling? What good did this do anyone?_

Suddenly, she stepped back, the corners of her mouth drawn up in what just might have been a smile as she held out her fingers in a kind of framing box. "There. All finished. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Well, it wasn't a kidney shot."

"What?"

"Nevermind," he said, walking to the bathroom and shaking out the shirt as he ran his fingers through his hair, blinking as a few stray strands floated down in front of his face. Same familiar cut, with only a few strands arching down to bob in front of his eyes. A little longer in back than he liked, but she hadn't totally fucked it up.

"Hey, thanks-" he began, walking back out into the room, but there was no one there. The scissors lay on his dresser, and the only thing that remained of her was the faint swell of raspberries.

He ran another hand through his hair. "What the hell was that?" he muttered.

The empty room had no answer.


	7. Draw

Disclaimer: Don't own any of it. I'm just playing on borrowed time……….and borrowed characters.

_All my work and endless measures _

_Never seem to get me very far _

_Walk a mile just to move an inch _

_Now even though I'm trying so damn hard _

_This world can turn me down but I _

_Won't turn away _

_And I won't duck and run_

_Cause I'm not built that way _

_When everything is gone_

_There is nothing there to fear _

_This world cannot bring me down _

_'Cause I'm already here  
_  
-Three Doors Down

Chapter 7

Quistis stood and finished the last of her stretches outside in the Quad in anticipation of her daily run, rolling her shoulders as she shrugged the last of the kinks out of her neck. She checked her watch. Exactly fifty minutes before the second bell. Plenty of time to run, dress and tape her weapon in preparation for her session with Seifer.

She looked up at the sky, narrowing her eyes at the chill in her bones as she began her run, shoes pitter-patting against the deserted sidewalks and stone steps. Grey clouds were gathering in the distance, bringing the winter with them. Snow. She could feel it, and it always made her tense. She could not trace why- it belonged to a set of memories now long buried under Shiva's ice.

The GF's had kept the memories for awhile, soaking up nightmares and dreams alike like ethereal sponges, keeping her mind ripe and focused for training. Each summon, especially her first, had been a release, a drug so beautiful and numbing she'd wanted to keep Junctioning forever, and after awhile, started to forget why.

_But that was the idea, wasn't it?_

So wonderful, the iciness of amnesia spreading in the back of her mind even as Shiva's own frost spread across the battlefield at her command. Exhilarating, feeling Ifrit's strength flow through her veins, of looking through Bahamut's fiery eyes and unleashing hell. Forgetting herself, forgetting everything but the gods in her veins as she surrendered control to the fire and the frost the demigods provided, every cell in her singing, every cell in her on fire.

Certainly, she'd had the vague, illogical suspicion that humans became the GF's slaves themselves, instead of the role so commonly portrayed, but she'd ignored it. The amnesia provided by the strength of the magic made one forget their weaknesses, until they could remember no part of their past, weakness _or_ strength. The soldiers forgot their past fears, their past insecurities, yes, but they also forgot how to be strong on their own.

Since the Sorceress War, she'd read several pieces of literature from authors who advocated the benefits of training without GF's, citing memory recovery as a distinct advantage as well as renewed human senses. It had been her inspiration to finally unJunction Shiva. She was strong enough without GF's, anyway, her Blue Magic honed and sharpened to a highly destructive capacity.

Although Quistis harbored a certain degree of dread about the specifics of her past, hearing Irvine discuss their childhood awakened a desire in her to know what things had really been like, if they had been as happy as Irvine seemed to think. She had vague recollections, snippets of Squall, Selphie, Ellone, Zell, Irvine……………memories of laughter, memories of standing between Seifer and Squall, trying to break them up, and memories of a life pre-garden that taunted her from the depths of her magical amnesia like fish in dark waters.

Dark waters that ran deeper than she wanted to remember, most likely.

Quistis, however, had never been one to subscribe to the idea of victimization. People moved on from their past, from their failures- they either created a life for themselves or had no one else. She could face it…she had faced an all-powerful sorceress hell-bent on destroying the world to a chronological singularity. What could be worse than that?

With that thought in mind, she had abstained from GF usage since. Shiva's summon was still locked in her beside table with the key taped underneath her bed frame- there was no one else who had the same compatibility level with the ice princess as she did, and there were no missions that currently required GF backing, anyway. She remembered un-junctioning Shiva, and feeling a vague, unexplainable terror at the prospect of memories to come...and stuffing it back down into the place where all her other repressed feelings went.

_Truth be told, she was running out of room._

Since then, memories had drifted back, drifted home, capsules of afternoons spent swimming with the orphanage gang, baking cookies with Selphie, Ellone and Matron and chasing the boys away with sticky rolling pins. Visions of trying to get Squall and Zell to play dress-up with varied success, and Seifer with no success at all. Seifer, undoubtedly, was the worst husband during games of house, which usually ended in a yelling match, seeing as Quistis was 'too bossy' a wife and Seifer refused to go to 'work'. Irvine, however, had always been a willing participant in most of her games, being by far the most calm of the male children. She'd giggled out loud at the memory of Irvine prancing around in one of Matron's old house dresses, ordering Squall to clean his room and telling Seifer to sit in the corner, telling Quistis and Selphie to make his dinner then running and tripping over his skirt in the mud as the entire group subsequently ganged up on him. There were bad memories too, memories of Squall and Seifer grappling in the dirt and recollections of Squall turning away from her, but the good memories were worth the somewhat unpleasant. The memories were triggered by random events, the memory of dress-up games spurred by the sight of a pair of gaudy blue beads on Matron's dresser, the days spent playing under Cid's desk sparked by the site of an old letter opener that was a favorite forbidden weapon of the children in their pretend games of war.

She chuckled at the irony as she jogged, her long blonde ponytail swinging behind her, flapping up against her ears. After a few laps, she paused at the edge of the Quad, catching her breath and wiping at her brow, staring up at the sky as she shook out the burning warmth in her legs. As she watched, the first of the tiny snow drifted down, a miniature doily of ice twinkling like a diamond peel. She smiled a little, holding out her hand, feeling the miniature sting of the way it melted in her outstretched palm.

_Snow_.

Her eyes widened suddenly, and her smile faded, her expression turning slowly into one of horror.

_The snow was falling, and then it could begin-_

_The red stairs rose up, spiraling down, sickening_, _and then up and up_ **UP**-

Quistis blinked, the terror that had risen with the thought settling just as soon as it had come. She looked down, realizing that she had stopped running, and was now gripping the iron railing with white knuckles. She shook her head, trying to tear her thoughts back to the present.

"What was that?" she muttered. Thankfully perhaps, there was no answer, not adding to her brief conviction that she was losing her mind.

She checked her watch. Ten minutes to get ready. Sighing, she jogged back inside, away from the cold and away from a recognition just teetering on the sunrise of her conscious, waiting, threatening, to dawn.

…

…

…

Seifer frowned as he walked into the equipment room, studying the plain plastic card that was supposed to get him what he needed.

"Hello there." Came a soft, lulling voice. His eyes snapped up to meet a pair of dark irises, narrowed slightly beneath heavily clumped lashes. A pair of lips sheathed in a generous coat of gloss curved in greeting. The girl that stood before him was unfamiliar, but then, he didn't remember a whole lot of Garden's people, perhaps selectively. Her dark brown hair was let down around her shoulders in attractive waves, and Seifer found himself straightening, lips curving in an automated response that had absolutely nothing to do with his higher brain.

She smiled. "You must be new. Or, wait, didn't we have class together last year?"

He nearly gaped at her as he handed her his clearance slip. She didn't know who he was? "Nope." He replied curtly as she walked away, noticing her bending over in an obviously exaggerated fashion as she watched the screen of recommended supplies come up. "Hyne...it's so boooooring back here. Gets lonely, if you know what I mean." She winked.

"Yeah." _You have no idea_, he thought to himself.

"Hmmm..looks like you're under former Instructor Trepe." She mused. "You poor thing. I remember, her classes were sooo hard…she was a real slave driver." She twirled a string of hair around her finger as she jotted down a quick list off of the screen, then began to walk around the room, pulling things off the shelves.

He shrugged. This girl definitely wasn't the brightest bulb in the...whatever. He was too drained to think up clever witticisms today. He was fucking tired, and he still couldn't keep any food down. It had already been a bad day, and technically, it hadn't even started yet.

"There you go." Finished, the girl leaned on the counter, pretending to look pensive as she stuck the card between her teeth, biting lightly. He guessed that was supposed to be attractive, but really, he didn't think the card was all that clean, seeing as he'd dropped it twice on the way here.

"I'm Darshe." She said. "And come to think of it, I don't think I've seen you around…"

"You wouldn't." He couldn't believe it. She really had no fucking clue who he was. She was either stupid, new, or both.  "I don't think we know each other."

He studied the vacant look in her eyes. Probably both.

She grinned, leaning over the counter in an invitation that was hard to mistake. "Mmm. Would you like to?"

…

…

…

…

Quistis sat at the edge of her bench in the women's locker portion of the Training Room's back quarters, tearing a strip of black tape with her teeth before winding it around a small piece of thick, spongy material, the same that she'd made Seifer equip on his weapon. She pressed her thumb hard against the pointy tips on Save the Queen, making sure the sharpest edges were concealed and thus insuring that any contact with Seifer's skin would result only in a sizable sting.

Weapon satisfactorily neutralized, she pulled on a light armor skin underneath a black tank top, pulling up the edges of her practice gloves. The black leather was soft against her naked arms, a familiar comfort. She pulled on a pair of standard SeeD issue pants, snug-fitting spandex chaps that tucked nicely into her boots.

_The red flash of carpet, tumbling down_-

She narrowed her eyes, habitually chewing the inside of her cheek as she quickly blinked the thoughts away.

She was five minutes late already. Quickly, she walked out into the training room she'd reserved, steeling herself for another inevitable argument.

No one was there.

Shrugging, surprised, (and, if she admitted it, a little relieved,) she decided to forget to be annoyed at his tardiness. Better he than her. She had an example to set, after all.

Unfastening her whip from her belt, she uncoiled the thick coil and did a few snaps for practice, doing her feet drills as she worked. She liked the whip- the rush of air, the satisfying crack as the leather coiled out and struck the air-

Back_, SNAP._

Side_, SNAP.__  
_  
Thirty-four backsnaps and thirty-three side snaps later, the training room was still empty. Recoiling her whip, she checked her watch and leaned back against the wall, narrowing her eyes at the timepiece.

Seifer was twenty-three minutes late.

…

Seifer swore out loud as he hopped into his left boot, shoulder crashing up against the locker as he lurched violently to the right, nearly losing his balance.

He was furious. Twenty minutes late, and for **nothing**.

_What the hell was wrong with him?  
_  
Dozens of meaningless women, blurs of flesh and moans and heat and sweat, and now, he couldn't even do one.

Not **one**.

_Darla, or whatever the hell her name was, had him pressed against the equipment room shelves, doing her damndest to swallow his tongue. Grunting, he moved his hand in her hair, scowling as it caught in the hair-sprayed tangles and continuing on to the slight curve of her back. Her nails raked along his neck, first aid kits and shoe boxes spilling to the floor as she pressed hard into him, crushing his pelvis into the lower shelf. Her breasts crushed against his chest as she moaned something unintelligible, giggling against his lips. _

_She tasted like old leather-a stale, flat taste that resembled eating a boot. A boot with really sharp teeth, as he came to find out in the next second as she moved her lips down to bite his neck. _

_Why the hell didn't he feel anything but annoyance? _

**Yes, my Knight…ride for me…**

_He pushed her back against the shelf, easing the pressure off of his spine for the moment, letting his hand travel lower, tugging up the bottom of her skirt. _

_Why the hell didn't he feel excited?_

**Just. Fuck. Her. **

_Her nails scraped across his neck, earning her a hiss from his throat. She giggled again and quickly ran her tongue up the inside of his neck, and tried not to grimace. What was she, a spaniel?_

**Curves and a swath of black silk against his hands, his chest, his hips, and she was looking down at him, with her bottomless eyes, and her smile, sharp, sharp and her nails were digging into him-**

_Her hands traveled down, palms smooth against his stomach before they hitched on his belt buckle, the zipper a sharp sound in the silence. _

**Eyes that drew him in, eyes that chewed at him, absorbed him in the red pin pricks that lit her iris, her wine red lips peeled back to show her teeth -**

_Why the hell didn't he feel ANYTHING?_

**And there it was, that feeling, that sick, dark feeling, and they were in the dark and SHE was the dark- **

**-and he was fucking her, sweating, seething-**

_- **and she was laughing, and she was fucking** him**, piercing him with her eyes and her nails and her body, down into the core of him, tearing at him, her laugh as serrated as her teeth, and her teeth were everywhere-**_

_Her nails scratched the front of his bare hip and he caught her hand, jerking it away and pulling away from her in a movement that had taken his mind the last fifteen minutes to finally conjure up. _

_"What's wrong?" she asked, clearly not used to being stopped. _

_"I have to go," he muttered. "I'm late." Well, at least it wasn't a lie, as well as an excuse. He didn't give a shit if Trepe had to wait. He just wanted to get the hell out of here, away from this state of being that was between a void and a living hell- _

_"Oh come on," she purred, grinning as she pressed back against him. "You weren't this reluctant a minute ago."_

**Nails, persistent, digging into his groin...digging into his gut and his head and peeling him back to the hungry dark- **

_"Get the _**fuck**_ off of me!" he snarled, earning himself a wounded and confused look from the girl in front of him. _

_"Look, I've gotta go." He tried to sound calmer, fighting the rising panic in his blood. _

_"What the hell is your problem?" she hissed, reminding him of a very old, very nasty alley cat whose tail he had made the mistake of stepping on once. _

_He narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't worry, I'm sure another customer with a dick will walk in within the next five minutes-" _

_Smack. The sting of her hand barely made an impact. _

_"Yeah.__ Let me know if you ever happen to grow one." She stalked away from him, adjusting her skirt and slamming the door behind her. _

_He had blinked. What the fuck was wrong with him? _

_He'd stood there for a good five minutes, contemplating that very question before grabbing a roll of the tape and as many low-level spells as he could in a handful, jogging down to the training center, aware that Trepe was probably going to wring his neck...……………_

Seifer glared down at his shaking hands as he wound the tape around Hyperion's gleaming blade, securing the foam in place. He felt hollow, as if a single touch would shatter him.

He was filled with echoes, cells singing with the very essence of nothing. Booze, food, sex, it didn't matter...

Nothing filled him anymore.

…

…

…

Quistis glared at the clock bolted to the ceiling directly ahead of her, stroking the smooth leather chord of her whip as she imagined how it would feel around Seifer's neck.

When that boy showed up, she was going to superglue a watch to his forehead. No. A clock.

No. A chrono-satellite.

She wasn't sure what made her angrier. The fact that she was waiting for him, or the fact that in reality she had nothing better to do.

She waited another five minutes before sighing in disgust, coiling her whip in her hand and turning to leave.

As Fate would have it, the door chose that moment to admit one very rushed- looking Seifer Almasy, hair messed and blade hastily taped, a sour (if permanent) scowl etched into his scarred forehead.

She stepped back, tripping on her retreat as he nearly knocked her over. She righted herself in time and stepped back just far enough to offer him a decent glower.

He was dressed in a similar combat uniform, a tight-fitting black t-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants, all standard Garden issue. The fairness of his hair was a stark contrast to the black ensemble, making him look like some harried dark angel, scar wrinkled up in a frown.

"You're late." She stated, crossing her arms. He gave her a short smile that attempted innocence (and failed miserably), running his fingers through his hair in a boyish fashion, eyes not quite meeting hers.

_At least he showed up_, she thought to herself. _I supposed one must take what one must. _

She looked up, preparing to lightly chastise him for his tardiness and then move on with the exercise, which was when she first noticed the reason.

There was red smeared on the corner of his mouth, too light and rosy to be blood and too prominent to be nothing, and the line of marks drawn fresh beside his neck, four in close succession. She took a step closer, narrowing her eyes, and he straightened, clearly unsure of what to make of her proximity. She sniffed. He reeked of sticky sweet, a damp smelling musk that was undoubtedly the stink of cheap perfume. Women's perfume.

Seifer grimaced as the look on Quistis' face turned from placated to infuriated. Oh, _shit_. Here came the fireworks.

Instead, she exploded internally, the icy anger in her veins coming to light in her eyes before she whirled, stalking back into the center of the room.

Seifer followed her, reluctantly, surprised as hell when Mt. Quistis didn't explode all over him. He almost wished she had. Her silence was disconcerting.

Not to mention about a hundred times more unpredictable.

She uncoiled her whip again, and he noted with some degree of relief that she had also taped her weapon. At least she wasn't a sadistic hypocrite.

_Yet_.

"I trust you junctioned your magic." She said in a voice cold enough to shrink balls. Although, that outfit was anything but icy…He almost slapped himself.

"Yeah." He replied.

She stood opposite him, snapped her whip once, and slid a well-muscled leg back to a ready position. He had seen that position before. Her whip wasn't taped that time, and for all his former mockery of her weapon, he was glad to see Save the Queen's pointy barbs tapered down. That stupid thing hurt like a bitch, and so had the bitch wielding it.

"Well, come at me, then." She ordered.

_Yes, come at me, Seifer……………...come here……………….._she grumbled to herself. _Let me reward your tardiness_……..

He swung Hyperion a few times, a move mixed with equal parts of rust and grace. Quistis knew he still had the talent: it just needed to be oiled. The muscles would not take long to relearn their old dance, not in Seifer. Right now, however, she was more interested in frying those muscles than in testing them.

He took a running sweep at her, not even getting within five feet before his feet were swept out from under him. He hit the floor with a resounding smack, Hyperion clattering next to him. With a jerk of her wrist, Quistis disengaged her whip from his ankle and took a step back. Quistis was good, and while he had been drinking himself into oblivion, she had been getting better.

"Wrong approach.." She announced. "The whip is extremely effective as a long-range weapon. You should disengage the user's ability to take you out at a distance, before using a close-range physical attack. You should know that by now."

Grunting, he got to his feet, dragging Hyperion up with him. She was already murmuring something, then suddenly raised her hand. The arena erupted with bolts of light, forcing him to quickly toss up his sword again and ground himself just as the first of the forks struck the sword above him. Hyperion acted as a perfect lightening rod, the sword spiraling back down into his hand as he rolled to his feet.

Standard grounding procedure for Bolt magic. He was amazed he remembered.

He slid on the well-waxed floor as he gathered momentum for another charge, muttering as he ran another sweep at her. "Fire." He hissed, feeling the familiar burn in his hand as a wave of flame reached out a flickering tongue to the woman in front of him. She raised her hand, and a thin white veil spread out from her fingertips, dispelling the weak fire spell. Fucking shield magic.

Still, he pressed through on his attack, only this time, the dulled barbs of the whip caught him in the neck. He hissed, staggering backwards, amazed that she could spell and counter with such efficiency.  He whirled, and the flat of his sword whirring to meet her stomach, but she took the opportunity to jump back, jerking the whip with her and wheeling him into the ground.

"Sloppy." The same Instructor's tone, clipped as she moved her hand down, snapping the whip back with a graceful jerk of her arm.

"Thanks," he replied coldly.

_Asshole_.

Quistis narrowed her eyes.

"I'm not going to coddle you, Almasy," she replied, her voice just as cold. "If you stink, I'll tell you so."

_Bitch_.

He reached out a hand. "Bolt!"

Stings of light sparked through the room, and he dove forward, the arc of Hyperion glaring in the corner of his eye as he spun to strike-only to stare at the ceiling once again. "Fuck," he muttered, staring up at the ceiling as his spine throbbed beneath him, humiliation burning like the acid in his under-used arm muscles. A boot came to press down hard on his neck, and he followed the slender slope of leg up into Quistis' furious gaze.

"You're wasting my time." She snarled. "You are more than half an hour late, and already exhausted from an activity not even remotely related to training. You are _pathetic_." Her eyes narrowed further. "You have apparently learned as much in your presence thus far as you did in your absence."

His eyes narrowed and he grabbed her ankle, throwing her off of him as he jumped to his feet. "What the fuck do you know what I've learned?"

"You think I don't know where you were, you ignorant ass? Making me wait in here while you went tomcatting?" she shouted. "Is my time so beneath you that you have to waste as much of it as possible?"

"You don't know **shit**!" he shouted back.

Where did **that** come from?

"I know that you have the opportunity to change your life, and instead you're throwing it away, again!"

"Oh, and look at you, a pillar of fucking wisdom and maturity. An example to us all." He shot back, anger literally splitting his vision.

"Well, at least I'm not fucking my opportunities down the drain." She spat.

"Yeah, you certainly aren't." His eyes narrowed, lips curling back in a mocking sneer. "I don't need some dried up prude telling me how to live my life."

Her fist came around, snapping his head back with the force. **Ouch**. The girl in the supply room had nothing on Trepe.

Slowly he brought his head up, touching his lip, feeling warm blood flow onto his fingers. He wasn't surprised at the punch. Quistis Trepe did not hit like a girl.

After all, he'd taught her himself.

In the next instant, he barreled into her, the breath knocked out them both as he pinned her between his body and the cold concrete of the wall. She glared at him, arms straining against his chest in an attempt to dislodge him, but he had the upper hand this time. She hadn't expected him to fight back.

…in fact, he'd surprised them both.

"Be careful, Quistis. Be really careful." He whispered. "One of these days you're going to bite off more than you can chew."

Her eyes met his dead on. "Don't flatter yourself, Almasy." she whispered furiously, "You're barely a mouthful."

Their eyes met locked, each trying to catch their breath and their wits, both of which seemed to be absent. His eyes narrowed as he looked down at her, suddenly very aware of the way her hips were ground against his, hands splayed out across his chest, but no longer pushing him away, and his anger at her was twisting strangely in his gut…

The two broke apart at the sound of the door sliding open. Two young cadets stood in the entryway, wide-eyed as they took in the scene before them.

"Hey is this room-oh, uh, guess it's occupied."

Quistis straightened up, quickly assuming her Instructor's posture. "We were just finishing, actually." She said coolly, turning to Seifer.

Her eyes narrowed. "You are dismissed, _cadet_." She stated coldly. He narrowed his eyes in kind, and gave her a long, mocking bow, spreading his hand out in offering.

"Please, ladies first." He drawled, his eyes all mockery.

"Well, in that case-" she extended her arm in a similarly scornful gesture. "Perhaps **you** should precede me, given your performance today."

The cadet on the left looked like he didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or run. The cadet on the right looked terrified.

Heat stirred at her quip. "Please, I insist. My lady." He persisted, voice as sultry as he could muster.

She glared at him, her eyes foretelling of unspeakable murder.

He cocked his head at her, clapping a hand to his heart, all grace and modesty for the moment. "I could not bear to leave the room, knowing that behind me, lay Balamb's greatest treasure, alone in such a desolate state-"

Quistis threw up her hands. "For Hyne's sake!" she swore, stalking from the room with a stiff, furious stride.

Seifer just watched after her, sneer held firmly in place as the two cadets at the doorway shared a look, then promptly left the room as well.

A smile tugged at his lips as he watched her stalk through the door. He had forgotten what fun it was to spar wits with Quistis Trepe.

Not to mention, watching her retreat.


	8. Old Friends

_Redemption is a mountain_

_A million miles high_

_And you'll loose your feet and loose your grip_

_With every tear you cry _

_It's hard to see the summit_

_When your eyes are halfway drowned_

_But the hardest thing's not climbing up_

_It's falling further down _

_For Redemption may be a mountain_

_A million miles high_

_But pity is an avalanche_

_That'll kill you 'ere you die_

-altol

Chapter 8- Old Friends

Seifer stretched, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders as he stepped out of the showers. He'd lifted weights in room 2B for another half hour after Quistis had stormed out, enjoying the luxury of having an empty weight room to himself but certainly not enjoying the fact that he hadn't lifted for well over two years. His arms were on fire, and he'd nearly decapitated himself trying to lift his old bench weight.

_How embarrassing. _

Seifer toweled off his hair before securing the rest of the flimsy white thing around his waist, still tonguing the portion of his lip newly split open by his former Instructor's fist. He had to smile, though.

Apparently his 'lessons' had paid off.

He could still remember teaching her how to hit on the grassy lawn back at the orphanage. Cute little thing, Quisty, but annoying as hell. Then again, they all were.

That particular day she had flown at him, a fury of swiping palms and tear- streaked cheeks for something or other he'd done to her, (the indiscretion no longer mattered now, and he'd committed too many to distinguish anyway). For example, he didn't exactly remember whose bed he'd put the toads in (probably Quistis), who exactly he'd buried in the sand and left to the crabs (probably Zell), or who he'd tied to a tree (probably Squall) but he did vaguely remember it all being funny as hell, and well-worth the punishments.

For this particular offense, she'd hit him with all the fury her tiny palms could muster, which admittedly, wasn't much. He'd decided then and there that Quistis needed to learn how to fight. Aside from Squall, Quistis was the closest thing he had to an equal at the orphanage, and it simply wouldn't do to have an inferior combatant. He was only five; after all, he hadn't yet learned the clause that females were not to be hit by their male counterparts. Besides, the only admission to Quistis' female nature his brain possessed was in the strange, vague fear of cooties all children are mysteriously imbued with.

When he offered to teach her, it was more to distract her from crying than it was to actually teach her to hit him, (which he would learn later was a very short-sighted idea.)

At any rate, it worked. Her anger had faded instantly when he offered to teach her and her eyes lit up like a bright blue light switch. Quistis was undoubtedly the brain out of all of them, aside from maybe Selphie who liked to take apart the phone and other electronics. Selphie, however, had a very short attention span, and things that she dismantled were usually left that way, much to Matron's chagrin.

Quistis, however, was a strangely patient, studious child. She soaked up books like a tiny little sponge, (made him and Irvine carry her stupid books home from the library and cried if he dropped them in the mud) and took a great pleasure in telling them about everything that she knew that they didn't. It got on his nerves most of the time, but he could readily admit she was smart and that sometimes her drivel had been amusing. Any offer to teach her something always served to distract her, whether from her pain, her anger, or simply, her boredom.

Naturally, he ended up teaching her a lot, seeing as he was the cause of a lot of her childhood ailments.

For whatever reason, it never sat well with him when Quisty was mad at him for his teasing, probably because her reaction was the worst. Zell would tattle like the little baby that he was, Irvine would usually just punch back or act like he didn't care, and Squall would either lash out him or ignore him, the latter of which was commonplace and boring. Selphie would cry, and Ellone was on a lofty level of near adult status in the little group, almost at Matron's, so she wasn't able to be pestered.

Quistis herself wasn't much for tears, although the girl had a temper and a bossy streak a fucking mile wide even then. When he made her angry, she either chased him, bawled, or stuck her nose up in the air and ignored him, the last of which grated on his nerves to no end.

He couldn't _stand_ being ignored.

So that particular afternoon, he taught her to punch. He considered himself to be a master of punching. After all, he'd learned a lot of it from his old man.

He remembered grabbing her tiny little hand (which really, he supposed, had been as small as his), and molding her fingers and thumb into a tiny fist. Her wrist was weak, though, and she ended up punch-slapping him more often than actually punching him, neither of which hurt. She didn't actually want to hit him by this time, either, which didn't help the potency or direction of her punches. He decided to show her how by actually pretending to hit her, and had ended up hitting her in the eye on accident. Even then, he wondered how the hell it was possible to hit someone on accident, but there it was, his knuckles pounding into the crest bone of her upper right eye with enough force to knock her backwards.

Her lip had wavered for a moment, nose scrunching, big blue eyes tearing up on the verge of a full-scale bawl, and Seifer winced in anticipation of the horrible sound.

"Don't be such a _baby_," he'd said.

Just as suddenly, her eyes narrowed, and she punched him in reciprocity in the left eye.

Hard enough to knock him on his ass, in fact.

They'd both wound up with black eyes, and both ended up grounded when Matron found out what they'd been doing, courtesy of Chicken Wuss.

Seifer chuckled aloud at that memory, the sound of rather rusty for lack of use. She really was a hardcore bitch, even then...

His thoughts were interrupted by the locker room doors swinging open and a very familiar southern drawl echoing through the locker room.

"Lazy yella moon comin' up tonight, shinin' through th' trees- ow!" The sound of smacking was heard, sounding remarkably similar to leather resounding off of the back of someone's head.

"Crickets are singing' and lightenin' bugs are floatin' on the breeze, baby git readyyyy-ow, knock it off!"

"Well if you'd sing a less stupid song-"

"Or just stop stinging altogether-"

His skin crawled. Those voices…

"Hey screw you. I don't make fun o' yore music. Youuuu an me goin' fishin in the dark- Ow! Dangit, those gloves friggin' hurt, Zell!"

The pitter patter of the showers started up, interrupting the scuffle. The crackle of the radio was heard, and suddenly a more macho theme echoed through the showers. He could hear the shuffle of clothes, and a distant rattle followed by a curse as someone banged their head on a locker.

"Hell ya! Now this's music, cowboy!" came the jubilant shout. Seifer peered over the lockers, narrowing his eyes as he watched Zell slide across the wet floor, towel around his waist.

"This is crap," came another caustic voice, one that made his muscles shrink wrap against his skin the way they always did during a battle.

_Squall_.

"I slam the door- BOOM- when I come into the bedroom-Wham-bam 'cause I'm the king of the castle!" shouted Zell beneath the spray, his voice incredibly off key and obnoxious. Which, Seifer concluded, was probably the point. He leaned back over the sink, scrubbing at his teeth hard enough to bleed the gums.

"You're the King of the Idiots, I'll grant you that." Muttered Squall.

"Na na na.turn me on, turn me loose, try to hit it it's a hassle-"

"Zell, if you shut up, I'm gonna stuff this soap down your throat." Irvine this time.

Hard to believe **_these_** were the men that had saved the world.

Zell ignored the two, cheerfully washing his hair. "Come and get some 'a this, don't forget the innuendo, play me like-ow, knock it off! Hey! Ow! Who throws SOAP! Ow! Alright! Come on, guys!"

The showers ceased, but Zell's singing didn't. "You burden me with your fast food, you'd have me eat no fries-"

Even Seifer had to roll his eyes at Zell's blatant butchering of the song as he moved to the sink and leaned forward to spit. He wanted to get the hell out of here, before they noticed he was here. Unfortunately, however, he still had his shirt back in the locker. Screw it…his room wasn't far from here, he could duck in-

Irvine shook his head, and eventually joined in, mimicking Zell's lewd towel dance. "You say to me, I don't talk enough, but when I do I'm a fool. These times I've spent, I've realized, I'm going to shoot -"

"Shoot you," Squall scowled, rolling his eyes as he hung up his towel. "Not a bad idea."

Zell grinned as he walked around Squall, pulling on his t-shirt. "And leave-"

It was that moment that Zell rounded the lockers to the sinks, and noticed Seifer. Seifer glared up into the mirror, his eyes flashing with a mixture of defense and anger- an animal cornered. What muscles remained on his arm tightened upon instinct, a reaction that was no doubt not unnoticed by Zell, whose battle skills required him to read openings and defenses like body poetry.

"Whoa Seifer man, didn't see you there." Said Zell tersely. Seifer didn't miss the unmistakable, though not unfamiliar bunch of his fists upon the recognition of his former enemy. Someone killed the radio.

_Be damned if I'm running now,_ thought Seifer, standing rigid to regard the boy behind him.

"Chicken Wuss." He said coolly. Oops.

Old habits died hard.

Zell's eyes narrowed in response to the nickname and opened his mouth to make a comeback.

Irvine chose that moment to come around, a mellow, yet cautiously friendly smile on his face. "Hey Almasy," he drawled casually, slapping Seifer's shoulder as he knelt down over the closest sink, toothbrush wedged between his teeth.

Seifer stiffened at the contact, resisting the immediate instinct to strike out and clip the cowboy on the back of the head. Squall chose that moment to walk around the corner. His grey-blue eyes narrowed, and Seifer could sense the tension prickle on him. "Almasy."

"Leonhart." He returned, trying to appear unaffected that the former Sorceresses' Knight was now literally wedged between Balamb's three male Heroes, whose weapons he had not long ago been on wrong end of. He saw Irvine's shoulder's bunch, and saw Zell's face visibly constrict with tension at Squall's demeanor.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up on end.

_Shit_.

He held Squall's gaze, tense, wondering what the next five seconds would bring. The three could easily take him, and frankly, he was tired of pretending. Pretending that he could take these three, that he could belong here, that he could become a SeeD…

He was sick of the whole damned thing.

If it was going to end, he thought, let it damned well end now. He was sick and tired of running.

Squall's gaze flickered for a moment, and then he sighed, tension draining from his shoulders as he approached the sinks, lazily running his fingers through his hair which Seifer knew well was Squall's own trademark expression of agitation. Taking his fearless leader's cue, Zell's shoulders relaxed, and he threw his towel in the corner, casting one last look at Seifer before he grabbed his gloves and slammed the door behind him. Irvine cast him an odd version of a friendly smile as he passed, following Zell out as he pulled on his jacket.

It was just the two of them now, and the thought was nothing if not disconcerting.

"I spoke to Quistis this morning," came Squall's monotone voice from along the sinks.

"And?" He leaned down to rinse his mouth in the tap, keeping his eyes up like a nervous herbivore at the watering hole.

He was surrounded by fucking lions.

Squall's eyes were trained on him as well as he leaned over to spit in the sink. _Ah, so you don't trust me either, Squall_, sneered Seifer. _Wise choice._  
_  
I sure as hell don't trust you._

Squall walked back behind the lockers. "Quistis told me you trained with her this afternoon." Whoa. That had to be a fucking record for Squall in terms of words said at once.

Seifer rolled his eyes as he threw the towel into a corner of the room. _Great, here it comes_, he thought, _Quistis goes and tells Squall about mean old Seifer, I get kicked_-

"She said it might be more conducive, skill wise, for you to train against a similar weapon for now." Squall said carefully.

"She did, did she?" he replied, not liking where this was headed.

"Yeah. I'm offering, if you want to train."

The record had been broken. Squall had said at least seven words in a single sentence, and to him, no less. Seifer spat in the sink, straightening up to regard his former enemy in the mirror.

Former? That had yet to be proven.

_Trust no one_, his heard thudded.

"I don't need your help or your fucking pity, Leonhart." He spat, leaning over to pick up his boots.

Squall's stare was level, blank, contained in it no trace of friendship or hatred. "I wasn't offering either." He said evenly. "I asked if you wanted to train."

That was Squall's beauty, Seifer supposed, his blank slate eyes and his softly driven heart, a successful silence and a cold, easy grace that Seifer could only dream of possessing. Had bitterly dreamed, once.  Squall offered absolutes- yes and no, never and forever. He lived in simplicity.

Seifer's own life was one of sweat and struggle, of burden that he stacked upon his own spine until he'd fairly crawled with it.

They would always be different. They would never understand one another, not really.

Did that make them enemies? Did it have to?

Seifer narrowed his eyes. Too many epiphanies in one day could give him a heart attack.

Better make this the only one, then.

"Fine." He grumbled, his pride nearly crushing his throat as he spoke.

Squall jerked his head up sharply. "Fine. After hours, then, in the Training Center, room D."

"Whatever," Seifer echoed, watching the back of his former rival stalk through the door. His back. Not something Squall had turned on him very often. It was a strange sight indeed.

Seifer sighed as he grabbed his things and shoved them into one of the zippered duffle bags lying around.

This was one weird fucking day, and it wasn't even half over.

He ducked out of the doors just as a new crowd was coming in, worming his way into the going traffic and glaring generally at onlookers. He had only walked a few paces when he caught a blur of sound from the oncoming throng.

He frowned, stopping. He could have sworn someone had just said his name.

"SEIFER."

"Hey man, wait up, ya know!"

Seifer raised his eyebrows. He swore right, apparently.

Seifer whirled at the sound of the familiar voices, a wide smile breaking over his features as the sighted the other members of the once-prominent disciplinary committee.

Rajin was grinning ear to ear like an idiot, while Fujin wore a gentler grin that seemed out of character on her normally stern face. They looked the same as ever: Rajin with his dark, giant-like stature, Fujin with her regal stance, her somewhat stern face made more gentle by the slope of pale gray hair that dusted her cheek.

They hadn't changed a bit.

After only a moment of hesitation, Rajin lunged forward, grabbing Seifer in a vice-like hug. In spite of Rajin's familiarity, he wasn't used to much contact of any sort that didn't involve ruptured spleens or broken noses. Sensing him tense, Rajin quickly put him back down. Seifer slapped him on the shoulder, quickly plastering a grin on his face as Fujin gently patted him on his arm.

"Hey man, you look much better, ya know!" exclaimed Rajin. "Last time I saw you-"

Fujin elbowed him, and Rajin had the decency to look sheepish. "Uh well, anyway, you look good, ya know."

Seifer remembered all too well their last visit, and also felt a few pangs of sheepishness himself. "Hey, uh, Rajin man, I'm...sorry about that time. Y'know, uh, your nose…" He could remember flying at Rajin, catching him across the face, the crunch of Rajin's nose beneath his fist as it broke...

Rajin looked shocked at his apology, but quickly recovered via another elbowing by Fujin. "Hey man, no problem. What're friends for, ya know? I'll return the favor someday or somethin'." He gave Seifer a hearty clap on the back that nearly sent the ex-knight sprawling across the hallway. Seifer righted himself, trying not to let on how hard Rajin had hit him. Rajin really didn't know his own strength. Still, he'd known the right thing to say to put Seifer at ease.

Rajin really wasn't as clueless as he let on.

Fujin beamed at both of her male counterparts. "LUNCH." she suggested. Only years invested with Fujin gave the necessary unscrambling tools to determine whether her outbursts were ideas, orders, or suggestions.

They were usually orders.

"Thanks, but I don't think I'm supposed to eat in the-"

"ALL CLEAR." insisted Fujin, tugging at him.

"How-" he began, frowning.

"QUISTIS." answered Fujin, dragging him into the cafeteria.

Quistis? What the hell? Why was she looking out for him so much lately? Guilt? First Squall, now this?

When the hell did he get a keeper?

Furthermore, when the fuck did he start needing one?

"I'm paying, ya know." said Rajin quickly, as they grabbed trays. Seifer raised his eyebrow at Fujin's acquiescence. Fujin would NEVER let any guy pay for her, much less Rajin, unless...

So, they WERE a couple, as he had long expected that they would be.

Their world had moved on without him- it was a bittersweet thought, more sweet than bitter, and it surprised him.

He smiled. Apparently not as little had changed as he first thought.

After a lunch filled with catching up, Rajin and Fujin had to leave for a mission briefing, promising to get together when they got back. Seifer watched them go, a small smile on his face.

It was about time.

The two were interesting to watch. Fujin was clearly the aggressor in the relationship, and Seifer had a feeling that Rajin didn't mind being 'kept in line' at all. They sat in the cafeteria, laughing and talking long after their food was finished. And just like that, things were all right between the Posse that was no longer a posse. The members were too far changed for it to ever be as it once was- they had long outgrown the mold the gang-mentality had imposed. Their leader was too jaded and the members no longer delusioned with his greatness any longer. The change was not tragic- it was necessary, and Seifer found himself relieved to be relinquished of the burden of their worship.

Seifer stood, heading back to his room. Friends, yes.

But the Posse was dead.

Seifer shook his head as he walked back to the classroom to meet Trepe, eyes distant as he skimmed the halls. Two revelations in one day.

A bitter chuckle escaped his lips.

What wonders never fucking ceased.


	9. Surprises

I am watching the rise

And fall

of my

Salvation….

-Korn, Make Me Bad

Chapter 9

"Instructor Darxin?"

"No."

"Instructor Green?"

"Are you _kidding_ me? Absolutely not."

"Darren Cobert?"

"_No_. Will you give up already?"

The two young women walked down the corridor to the opening of the cafeteria, each grabbing a tray.

"Nope. What about Instructor Glyphais?"

"Serabin? No."

"Why not Serabin? The guy is classically attractive, a top notch SeeD, Head Instructor, and I've heard good things about sack stats. A real gentlemen, you know, wine you, dine you, sixty nin-"

Quistis covered her eyes with her hand. "Xu!"

"Besides, he seemed pretty interested when your name came up at the staff meeting last week…"

"Your obsession with my sex life is decidedly unhealthy, Xu."

The other woman brushed a dark strand of hair out of her eyes as they approached the counter. "You mean your _lack_ of one. Now _that's_ unhealthy." Xu grinned at the cafeteria personnel. "One salad please, hold the dressing."

"The same," echoed Quistis, glaring at Xu out of the corner of her eye. "With dressing."

Quistis shook her head at her friend as she gathered her tray and walked towards the table. "Just because I chose not to screw like a rabbit-"

"Who said anything about screwing like a rabbit?" Xu gestured at her friend with a celery stick. "You don't even screw like a _plant_, for Hyne's sake."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "I'm not even going to respond to that."

"So, are you sure you don't want me to put in a good word with Glyphias for you? He's Rank A and I've heard he's above average in other departments-" Xu held up her celery stick, indicating length.

Quistis shook her head, hiding her face with one hand. "Stop. Just stop."

Xu just grinned. "So, anyway, how's your star pupil doing? He hasn't tried to turn his sword on himself yet, has he?"

"He's not my _pupil_," snapped Quistis. "And no."

"Pity." Snorted Xu, examining a lettuce leaf before setting it aside.

Quistis ate a bite of her own salad. "Give him a break, Xu."

Xu's gaze turned sharp. "This is rich. One moment you'd give your right arm to have your whip around his neck with the left, the next you're watching his back?"

Quistis narrowed her eyes. "I…grew up with Seifer. Besides, I owe Matron. When she asked me, I couldn't say no. I don't think it's something you could understand."

_I barely understand_ it, she added to herself.

Xu shrugged in return. "Maybe you're right. Still, I'm a strong supporter of the Balamb Kennel Society.'

The young blonde looked up. "What?"

Xu's grin was catlike. "Oh you know, the idea that all old lapdogs should be put out of their misery."

"You're terrible," replied Quistis, shaking her head.

Xu shrugged. "It passes the time. So, do you have a plan regarding this new star student of yours?"

Quistis set down her fork. "Not a clue. Technically, I don't have any actual authority over him. He's here of his own accord. None of the other instructors wanted him so of course, voila, ask Quistis, **she** doesn't have a life, **she'll** take care of everything-"

"It's a step up from paperwork." Said Xu, her mouth full of salad.

"Please." Quistis rolled her eyes. "At least I never wanted to _strangle_ the paperwork."

Xu laughed. "What are you supposed to **do** with him, anyway?"

Quistis shrugged. "Run through any new procedures that have come up in the last two years, review GF usage and political etiquette, try not to strangle him…"

A chuckle. "Sounds like fun. Well, if you ever need an old dog put down, just let me know."

Quistis shook her head and collected her tray. "I doubt the D-district prison is an even trade for killing Seifer, Xu."

Xu twirled her fork. "Eh, I'd live off the memory."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "I have a meeting with Cid. I'll talk to you later."

"Mm. Shall I put in a good word with Serabin, then? Have him give you some private lessons?" Her friend waggled her eyebrows.

"You're a sick woman, Xu."

"I know. It passes the time."

…

…

…

She stood with her hands folded smartly behind her back, spine straight and eyes forward. It was a habitual posture she had developed in his presence, of a formality that could not be broken no matter how much he insisted on it. Her hair was neat, uniform spotless, all business and punctuality. She was, without a doubt, his most dependable SeeD, but even as such, her always-on-guard appearance made him a bit nervous. He had much preferred the studious, sweet little girl that had run across a wet lawn, chasing the luminous tails of firefly flight…but knew that girl was gone. She had died long before Garden's gates, and yet…he found himself searching for her, here…searching all of them for traces of innocence.

He wondered, sometimes, if he would go to hell for all the children he had killed to make soldiers. But Quistis…

Quistis had walked through the doors already dead.

"Progress report?"

She looked flustered. "Sir, in all honesty-"

"At ease, Quistis. You may speak freely."

Her shoulders slumped only slightly, and her hands came around to fold into one another. The look in her eyes was now one of frustration.

"Frankly, sir, it's like giving a Wendigo an enema."

He suppressed a chuckle at that analogy. "Give it time."

The young woman shook her head. "I gave it a year of my life, Cid, two years ago, and you saw firsthand how effective my instruction was."

He folded his hands. "This is Seifer's best and only chance. You and I both know it."

She looked forlorn. "I can't do it. It was unfair of you and Squall to…" She wrung her hands. "He's _impossible_. He lashes out as hard as he did before, and he's a thousand times more _resentful_-"

He held up his hand. "The board for instructor certification meets this year, doesn't it?"

She nodded, silently.

"Voluntary aid hours would certainly benefit your transcript, wouldn't they?"

He was baiting her, and they both knew it. It left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. She had been like a daughter to him once, and now, a daughter of the military whose blood was forged in steel and fire. His love was now a distant affection, born of that knowledge, but he knew that hers was not. He knew her loyalty to both he and Edea, and it gave him no great thrill to abuse it like this.

Still…it had to be done. For all their sakes.

She remained silent, but the wringing of her hands had stopped.

"All we require is a brief psychological and performance analysis. Enough to admit or deny him access. You've nothing to lose this time, isn't that right?"

_Only my sanity,_ she thought to herself, staring at the polish of her boots. _Only the remaining mechanism that lets me sleep at night…_

"Give it some time, Quistis. You were given this assignment for a reason. If you encounter any major problems, the council will be notified and you will be taken off watch-duty. You know I couldn't allow him back without the pretense of surveillance." He said, calmly. "Your personal success in this mission does not depend on his. This is an opportunity, Quistis. Be grateful for it."

_An opportunity for what?_ she wanted to yell, _for him to get in his last licks at the people he resents the most?_ But she kept silent. Cid wasn't stupid…he knew which bait to dangle, and he knew that she had been rewriting her admission transcripts for the Garden Board's Educational Committee. Damn him. Damn Seifer.

**Damn them all.**

"You'll report back in two weeks." It was not a question.

Resisting a tirade, she nodded her head, then quickly saluted and turned from the room. The doors shut behind her, and she stared out at the throng of students, clenching her hands. Cid had told her to be grateful…

Somehow, she couldn't summon a grateful bone in her body.

_We'll see who comes out on top,_ she thought to herself, resolve pumping through her veins like steel. When she headed towards her room, however, she felt a little dirty, bribery a thin film of dirt over her intentions. Why should she feel bad? He would only be helping to return to her what he had helped to take away so long ago- her instructor's license, and more importantly, her pride. She was only looking out for herself…something she should have done long ago.

Why then, did she feel so…_guilty_?

…

…

…

After the doors had closed behind Quistis, Cid sat alone in his desk, shrouded by the sunlight that seeped into his sweater vest. He looked down at the ocean of polished oak and his eyes quickly lost their focus under a sea of papers and other things long overdue. Clearing his throat, he adjusted his glasses and picked up a sheet of paper. He stared at it for a while before he realized that he was holding it upside down, and set it down with a sigh.

He glanced up at the clock, only to find it was approximately six minutes and seventeen seconds since he'd last checked. He fingered the glass rose on his desk, which sat placidly amongst the sea of papers. It had been a gift for his forty-eighth birthday from his wife. She'd wrapped it in blue paper. They'd drank champagne and made love in the middle of the afternoon. She made his favorite chicken dish for dinner and they'd sat on the steps till the early morning with their arms around each other, drinking coffee and watching the sunrise.

That was three years ago. It may as well have been an eternity.

Now, his wife chased shadows in the garden and he ate alone. They made idle conversations, and rarely looked each other in the eye, as if they were afraid of what they might find in there.

He hadn't touched her in two years.

He was not a foolish man. He knew where her thoughts drifted to on those nights that she lay beside him. She dreamt of golden-haired knights and leveled gardens. And the dreams were not always nightmares. She had stayed with him in body, but her spirit was elsewhere, chasing old dreams and shadows that lurked in the dark corners of her mind.

No longer a sorceress, maybe, but no longer a woman, either. No longer his wife.

The day she'd agreed to marry him was the happiest day of his life. He'd half expected her to say no. She'd smiled and slipped on the meager ring, however, and the joy had nearly killed him. They'd had a small ceremony in town and he'd carried her across the threshold. Touching her had been heaven.

Touching her now was hell. Each accidental contact filled him with pain.

Seifer Almasy was back in Garden. His wife had seen to it, chasing him into the shadows of a slum hotel and enlisting Quistis' help in watching over him. He knew that the young woman would agree. Few could refuse Edea. After all, he himself was her own willing puppet.

Rarely used these days, sad to say.

He'd had little choice in the matter of Seifer Almasy's reinstatement to Garden. On one hand, Balamb was expected to pick up its mistakes and clean up the mess the Sorceress and her knight had made. On the other hand, he was going to be eaten alive politically to be harboring not one, but two past criminals of the second sorceress war. The sorceress and her knight were a set of sorts, however, and he could hardly claim his wife's innocence and deny Seifer his. Protecting Edea from prosecution behind Garden's walls had meant protecting Seifer as well.

Seifer had always been problematic. Even as a child, the boy had harbored a darkness in his eyes that didn't have any place in a child. He acknowledged no other authority than Edea's, even as a child, and seemed decidedly mistrustful of everything, as if the orphanage and Edea and the children were all an illusion he was dreaming. An illusion, that, repeatedly, he tried to break. Cid had been at a loss of what to do with Seifer at Garden- the boy had spent more hours in detention than he ever had in the classroom. The boy was talented, intelligent, but horribly misguided. There were kinks in that boy that stretched the length of his life, ones that most likely would never be straightened out.

Did he hate the boy? The young man had probably touched his wife in ways he never had, and never would. The secret corners of his wife's beautiful, dark mind now belonged to this boy in a way that he could not understand, possessed her in a way that he never had and never could. Her memories and her skin carried forever the taint of their sins, which made him sick when he thought of it. Guilty, but sick.

His wife had always told him what a good man he was, and what a lucky woman she was in turn.

And yet, when her life crumbled around her, when all lights had blinked out into the darkness of her desire, she had not chosen a good man.

She had forgotten him.

Did he hate Seifer Almasy? No. When the young man walked through the doors, beaten and broken, a shell of a man with even more shadows in his gaze than before, Cid found pity welling up inside his chest instead of hatred. Young Almasy had been broken, too. Cid knew the feeling well.

Did he hate his wife? Perhaps that would make things easier, but no.

But there were days he hated himself.

Hated his inadequacy, his weakness, the rolls of his stomach and the creases in his brow. Hated the suspicion that all along, his wife had leant him her body, but never her mind. That perhaps, all along, her love had only been her duty, and he had been too foolish to know the difference.

Perhaps there had always been darkness in her, and he had been too impotent to see it. Even now, when her eyes met his from across the dinner table, they were distant. Miles away as she told him what a good man he was.

He was sick of being a good man.

He sunk his grip into the glass rose, jaw trembling as he threw it across the room as hard as he could. The chunk of glass shattered on the wall, raining the polished shards down onto the marble floor in a scattering clatter of sound.

A moment later his secretary, Gretta, opened the door and stuck her head in. "Is everything all right, Mr. Kramer?"

He straightened in his desk, folding his hands. "Yes, of course, thank you Gretta, everything is fine."

Gretta nodded. "You have a meeting in half an hour, sir. The men from Dollet about the two-week contract-"

He nodded, feeling the flush drain out of his face as he tried to get the tremor in his hands under control. "Yes, Gretta, thank you. Show them in as soon as they arrive."

The door closed behind her.

After a few minutes, he got to his feet, walking over to the puddle of shards and sweeping them neatly into the wastebasket. After all, that was what good men did.

They picked up the pieces.

…

…

He'd spent the day walking around Garden, revisiting old haunts. It was hardly nostalgic…memories lodged like bitter mothballs in his throat, making it a little difficult to breathe. He would have destroyed his place once, if he could have. And now…he sought shelter in it. It seemed to be a strange dichotomy of emotion, this home of his inspired. Bad memories, good too. The cafeteria was the same as ever, and so was the Training Center. Bite Bugs and junior classmen were still as stupid. He even ventured into the library, a place he hadn't bothered with unless Trepe had dragged him there for detention. He was somewhat awed by the long stacks of books, now that he took the time to notice them.

It was late…most of the underclassmen had gone to sleep, and the ones that weren't still up whispering about his presence in the halls were no doubt off doing more interesting things. He trailed his fingers along the ancient spines of the books and found the library's silence oddly comforting, while two years ago he would have found it maddening.

He walked past the gyms, through the large training center area back out into the central web near the library. Sighing, he walked in circles through the deserted circlet to the Quad, the air cool beneath his jacket. He wasn't worried about the Disciplinary Committee…he knew that as the former head of it, he'd gone to bed as early as anyone else and had relied on his reputation to keep the idiots indoors. Besides, if people had wanted to sneak out and screw like rabbits on his watch, he certainly didn't care. It wasn't as if he hadn't violated the curfew rule a hundred times himself for the same reason.

He had to chuckle at remembering his appointment to the Disciplinary Committee- he'd laughed his ass off back then, too. Once he got over the shock, anyway. Giving the job of rule enforcement to a guy who only liked the rules when they suited him? Who said Cid didn't have a sense of humor?

Leaning over the rail, he lit a cigarette, the last in the pack he'd stuffed into his pocket a few months ago. He'd probably stolen them…he didn't really remember. That was the thing about a two-year hiatus from yourself…you had to keep fucking yourself up so you wouldn't remember all the time you were wasting taking a pity cruise.

He took a drag, then leisurely blew the smoke out into the night sky, enjoying the rush of nicotine that crawled into his brain. The paper crackled as he took a long drag, tip lighting to an amber glow before turning dull with smoke again. He sighed, watching his breath fan out like a ghost, swirling into oblivion, hair hanging in his eyes as the wind picked up.

In reality, he didn't like smoking all that much, it was just another bad habit to pass the time. A self-destruction that he could control. Hyne knows he'd acquired enough of those during his relatively short life.

Some, of course, were worse than others. A slight nicotine addiction probably took a backseat to Sorceress possession.

He took another drag, then leaned forward on the rail again, enjoying the view. The moon spilled a skim milk light over the marble and water, creating a kind of surreal painting that occasionally moved in the breeze. The clouds spread like cotton over the dark, moving earth below, as Garden's lights cast eerie, colored shadows on the their soft, spun surfaces, the same shadows and colors he had watched from a dock in Balamb, some years ago, dreams burning in his chest like a phantom pain.

_I have no idea why the fuck I'm here…  
_  
"You're up late, Mr. Almasy." Came a scolding voice from behind him. He jumped, and the cigarette nearly flew from his fingers, spiraling down thousands of miles below to land in some distant ocean. He nearly had as well.

Quistis was regarding him solemnly, hands on hips, her expression only a little softer than before. He regained his balance, nearly suddenly sick at the height.

"Jumpy?" She was laughing.

"Fuck!" he wheezed, trying to catch his breath. "Are you trying to **kill** me?"

She walked up alongside of him, leaning over the rail. "If I were _trying_, you'd be in the ocean by now." She narrowed her eyes she leaned her elbows on the rail, regarding him. If he didn't know better, he'd say her tone was almost teasing.

He glared at her. "Aren't you supposed to be in **bed**, Trepe?"

She shook her head. "I have clearance to be out. What's your excuse?"

He snorted. "Have I ever needed an excuse?"

She snorted. "Not that I recall," she replied, looking up at the stars. "Empirically, you've inevitably **become** your own excuse."

Not knowing quite what to make of that, it was his turn to shrug. "Whatever works, right?"

They both turned and looked out at the sky, the silence semi-uncomfortable. Even as a kid, he never really understood their relationship. They could be fighting like holy hell one minute, and the next form an uneasy truce with no preamble whatsoever.

Like now. It was unnerving. Frankly, most times he preferred the fighting. At least he knew where that was going to lead.

He could smell her perfume- sweat and raspberries and a unique scent that could only be described as Quistis, warm and soft like lavender blossoms underneath the sharp tang of deodorant. The heat from her body was distracting. Or maybe that was irritation flowing through his blood. Impossible to tell. The woman inspired temper and distraction simultaneously. Always had.

He inclined his head just slightly in greeting, knowing that at some level his presence unnerved her as well and reveling in the idea. It was nice to know he had some power left, even if it was a hollow comfort.

"So, given up on teaching me yet?" he asked, cracking his knuckles. "Or do you still specialize in hopeless causes?" He smiled as her face darkened, knowing she had gotten his intended double meaning. What better wound to pick than Squall? He didn't know why, but he was feeling bitter and there was nobody better than Quistis for picking at scabs. She wore them on the outside, poorly concealed behind her thin veneer of composure and pride, if you knew where to look.

And he did.

"Admit it, Trepe. You couldn't handle me then, and you can't handle me now."

The blonde woman tilted her head back, tossing him a cold gaze over her shoulder as she flipped her hair behind her shoulders. "Don't flatter yourself," she sneered.. "You're as predictable as ever."

He sneered back. "And you _aren't_? Let me guess. You still sleep alone, and you don't sleep well. You still don't let anybody in because you're scared of what they'll find. You try to organize every second of every day, because for every second you think about how alone you are, you're that much closer to losing it. You spend every night staring at the ceiling, wondering why you're the only one that-"

"Shut up." She hissed.

"Please, tell me if I'm wrong." He sneered. _That'll teach you to pigeonhole me_, Trepe, he thought, anger burning.

But Trepe wasn't down for the count.

"What about you? **You're** the same! The same old bitter, insecure ass that strolled in here nine years ago! You're still compensating for your lack of humanity by trying to destroy everybody else's."

Anger poured through him like a live current. "The fuck do _you_ know about humanity? **You've** never experienced it! You're a fucking machine!"

Her cheeks were red. "At least I'm honest with myself! At least I know why I'm here!" She narrowed his eyes, her voice turning quiet, thoughtful. "You haven't got a clue, have you?"

"Fuck you." He snarled, then sulked, annoyed that she still had the power _to_ annoy him.

_She was right,_ he thought, fuming, _I haven't got a fucking clue why I'm here_.

Silence again…the same uneasy truce when they ran out of defense mechanisms.

"You really should quit those things…they'll kill you," she said quietly.

"Dying's inevitable, Trepe."

She rolled her eyes. "That's what all the martyrs say. Frankly, I'd rather get old." Leaning closer, she reached over, taking the cigarette from between his fingers and taking a long drag. She smiled at him, an almost cat-like grin as she blew the smoke over the rail, watching it billow into the dark before turning back to him. "You looked surprised, Seifer. Perhaps I'm not as predictable as you think."

She almost looked…sexy. He resisted the urge to punch himself.

"Anyway, you really shouldn't smoke. It represses your immune system and decreases your overall vitality, not to mention causes several different types of cancers."

Ah, now **that** was the Trepe he knew.

She cleared her throat and flicked the cigarette over the side, watching the amber-tipped object spiral down into the cloudy ink of night. She drank in his surprised expression with some measure of delight. "Surprised a second time in one night. This is a record for you, isn't it?"

She flicked her hair behind her shoulders again, glaring at him with purpose. "Same time tomorrow, in the classroom. And _read_ the books this time."

He shrugged, and watch her go before turning back to the scenery.

"Goodnight, Seifer."

Her words echoed after her even as the door slid shut. She'd surprised the hell out of him, he'd give her that.

"This time." He muttered, staring back out at the darkness.

Little did he know that Trepe spent most of the journey back to the exercise room coughing like a furball-afflicted cat. It was just as well that she'd been able to hold it that long…he never would have let her live it down. She was sure of that much.

She had never tried the awful habit before, but had always secretly wondered at its appeal. Well, she knew now, didn't she? It had taken every ounce of her composure not to hack up a lung in front of Seifer from the moment she inhaled. Damnit, that stuff rivaled a Marlboro's Bad Breath defense mechanism…although not nearly quite as immobilizing.

She spit into the sink, now coughing up the water. Her lungs, irritated at her, wheezed like rubber bands as she took another drink of water. She had wanted to prove a point to Seifer…although now she had no idea what the hell that point had _been_. Seifer had a skill of making her forget exactly what she had started out to prove to him in the first place.

Hexing all tobacco companies and Seifer for funding them, she changed into a pair of shorts and a black tank top, then scrubbed her teeth with bathroom soap as if her mouth had suddenly become the latrines of the D-District Prison. What had she been thinking? She'd gone out there wanting to make a truce, and had ended up doing something else entirely. What was it about Seifer that made her want to prove him wrong? Why the hell did she care what he thought, anyway?

She sat down on one of the locker room benches, wrapping her hands with coarse, thick tape before cutting the ends with her teeth. Shaking her hair back, she quickly secured it with a pony tail.

Why did it matter if he thought she was predictable or not?

_Because_, she reminded herself, switching off the light in the bathroom and walking into the weight room, _if he doesn't respect you, he won't listen to you._

She had the feeling, however, that getting Seifer to respect her was going to be one hell of an undertaking. The man didn't even respect himself.

She switched on the power grid in the weight room, watching as, one by one, the lights flickered on. She liked the silence of the empty room- it helped her to focus. She had been given the clearance to practice alone since her admittance at Dr. Kadowaki's recommendation, as a solution to her early insomnia. Now, though nights of sleeplessness still plagued her occasionally, it was mostly habit that brought her here.

She opened up on the punching bag instantly, swinging her weight on the heel of her foot and listening with satisfaction as the flat of her foot hit the bag hard enough to crush the cricoid cartilage of an average-sized human male.

**Slap**.

She lowered her leg, and in a lightening fast move, speared her hand into the bag's gut in a finishing move that had ended at least one man's life.

**Thunk**.

It was the only melody that put her to sleep, most nights.

….

….

Finally tiring of the scenery, Seifer trudged back to the dormitory wing the same way he came.

The far gym through the Training Center was the same from what he had seen yesterday, blue matts and the smell of sweat and leather ripe in the air. The lights and the sound of chains caught his attention, and he followed the sound. He walked past the weight room to find it empty, save for a young woman dressed in black pants and a tank top, kicking a punching bag with vigor.

Trepe.

She didn't seem to notice him. Her cuts were skilled, quick, the mark of a practiced killer. A cross-slice of her extended hand hit the bag with a hard slap- on a human, it would crush the larynx or trachea, particularly at the cricoid ring, and compress the esophagus against the posterior spinal column.

Ah, so that's where Trepe spent her nights. He should have figured as much.

Seifer remembered the literature by heart. Three killing zones to the neck- Zone 1 the thoracic inlet to the cricoid cartilage, defining the base of the neck where the tender and vulnerable great vessels lay, zone two, the midportion of the neck and cricoid cartilage to the angle of the mandible- jugular, pharynx, trachea, spinal cord amongst the vulnerable anatomy, zone three, the superior aspect of the neck, including the trachea, carotid arteries, jugular veins, and major nerves- direct forces could shear the vasculature. Exposure to exposed anterior aspects of the neck could crush the larynx or the trachea.

He remembered Non-Weapon Combat 509/Strategy 409- a required course for aspiring SeeDs. They had mapped out the human form's vulnerability, tacking weakness onto every spot of skin with a lesson on how to both exploit it and fix it. They taught them basic field medicine, and they taught them basic killing. Heal or kill. He'd paid more attention to the latter, naturally. On the whole, he'd found the class fairly interesting…and misleading. The human form was frail by design, but not by spirit. The teacher hadn't covered sheer will and stubbornness as one of the body's strengths, but Seifer had found by experience that some people were just harder to kill than others.

Trepe. She was refined, fast, he'd give her that. The vulnerability of her form was more than matched by the furiousity of her spirit. Trepe….all steel and roses, a killing machine that smelled like raspberries. He'd never understand her.

Seifer crossed his arms, watching Trepe attack the bag, limbs as graceful as any dancer and twice as strong. Absently, he wondered what it would be like to map Trepe out, to find her weaknesses and press them against her like a chokehold, to pin her down with everything she tried to be but wasn't.

A loud, shuddering breath escaped her lips as she turned, leg extended and arms tucked tight against her body, advancing and retreating all at once. He narrowed his eyes.

_And what's your weakness, Trepe? Which way do you fall?_

_…_

_…_

_…_

"Are you sure this is such a good idea, sir?"

The headmaster looked up from his paperwork at the young man that stood in front of the window, arms crossed as he looked out at the moon. The picture reminded him of himself, once, in younger days, although he did not remember being so cynical at such a young age. He was like Quistis, in that aspect. Both had already outgrown the sparkle common in the eyes of their age group, and instead were fixed with a determination well beyond their years.

"What would you have me do, Squall? Refuse him entrance?" he asked, calmly, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "The Tri-Garden Council would have a field day with the inconsistency, you know that."

Squall turned, rubbing his thumb across the pink line of his scar. "Edea was a good person, before. She was never as…angry as Seifer was. He's still angry. Nothing has changed."

Cid shook his head. "Edea would disagree with you, I'm afraid."

"With all due respect, sir, wouldn't it be safe to say Edea's opinion is a little biased?"

Cid sighed, replacing his glasses. _If you only knew, boy._

"Perhaps, Squall, but there really is nothing I can do. I do take some measure of comfort in the fact that Quistis is looking after him, though. I think that's best for everyone."

"That's just it." Squall shook his head. "Quistis could barely handle him before. He tore her to shreds almost every class period. She's-"

Cid smiled ruefully, and shook his head. "You worry too much about her, Squall. Give her time. I think," he began, thinking of the look of determination that had crossed her features before she left his office, "Yes. I think Quistis may yet surprise us."

Squall had his doubts, but kept silent.

Cid picked up his coat off the brass hanger in the corner, and patted Squall's shoulder affectionately. "You never know, my boy, Seifer may yet surprise us as well." The Headmaster walked tiredly out the door, with a reminder to lock up after he left.

Squall turned back to the window, a frown crossing his features as the Headmaster's last words rang through his head.

_That's exactly what I'm worried about._

_…_

_…_

If there was one time of the day that Quistis Trepe couldn't stand, it was nighttime.

Clipping her hair into a haphazardly formed vertical bowtie, she shut off the light in the tiny bathroom and walked to her bed in complete darkness, relying on her perfect memory of the room layout. She switched on her table lamp and contemplated reading her book, then decided against it. She'd had enough…excitement…for one day without reading about the history theory of Draw points. Besides, tomorrow promised to be another long, interesting, hellish day. With Seifer, it was just about the only guarantee she had.

Switching off the lamp, she lay on her bed in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for sleep to claim her, letting the events of the past few days sink into her skull.

Seifer Almasy, back at Garden. It still hadn't sunk in.

She had expected him to wash ashore, move south, or disappear, but certainly not end up back where he started. Perhaps he wasn't as predictable as she'd originally claimed.

In fact, she knew it. She had seen the madness in his eyes, the desperation as he had stood before them, those years ago. It had taken three of them to bring him down. Old dreams did not die easy, and Seifer's had been no exception. It would be a lie to say she had never thought of him. When she had, it was with a little sadness, and she had always wished him better than the last time she had seen him.

He looked terrible now, all bones and resentment and regret. But why was he back _here_? She highly doubted the broken figure that Seifer presented was capable of espionage…was he? Why in the hell would he voluntarily return to the scene of his first failure? And yet, when she had accused him of not knowing why he'd come back, his expression had looked almost empty…pained. She knew why he'd come back…and so did he.

He has nowhere else to go…

She knew that, like her, Seifer had no family to speak of, save for Fujin and Rajin. She doubted that he thought of the old orphanage gang as family. She remembered vague incidences there, distant like faded photographs left in the sun too long.

_Seifer chasing Zell around the backyard, Seifer hiding frogs in her pillow, Seifer and Squall, rolling in the grass, all black eyes and bloody noses…Seifer, spread out on the grass, hands folded behind his head._

"_C'mere__, Quisty. You can see all the stars from here…"_

_Seifer, pointing Hyperion sideways at her, Squall, and Irvine, hatred and desperation heavy in his eyes, Galbadia's polished marble walls behind him lighting the glazed madness in his eyes. _

"Come closer, dogs, face your fate…"

Restless, she turned over in her bed, stretching her arm out to the sea of white sheet that made up the other half of her bed, lightly running her fingers over the empty mattress. Sleep never came quickly to her these days, too many things on her mind.

_You still sleep alone, and you don't sleep well. You try to organize every second of every day, because for every second you think about how alone you are, you're that much closer to losing it. You spend every night staring at the ceiling, wondering…_

And damn him, he was right. She couldn't take this introspection…hell, she deliberately avoided doing it to herself. And to have Almasy picking at her brain, all blunt insult and simultaneously deliberate precision…

Why the hell had they given Almasy to **her**?

Because you're a bloody sap, Trepe.

_Shut up, conscience_, she hissed.

Wonderful…she was talking to herself. And _disagreeing_, at that. She resisted a sudden urge to pull at her hair.

Instead, she kicked angrily at the sheets. Hadn't she endured enough? Wasn't it difficult enough for her without him alienating what little structure she had left? Seifer knew her too well, knew which parts were tender, and new precisely how to jab them to make them sting the most.

And yet, she remembered the look in his eyes as she'd released him, that first night, the air of desperation and defeat…she knew his loneliness. They had been almost brethren in their solitude…but he had never chosen to see it that way.

…his spirit had been so beautiful, once…bright and polished and hopeful…she'd known it from the first day of class. She'd known if from the first moment she saw him fight, in the grace and promise of his form and passion.

…_Men like Almasy should never be broken_…

Quistis sighed, knowing that, deep down, her decision to help him had nothing to do with the thought of polishing her resume for garden's education panel.

It was a break from the paperwork, anyway, a chance to catch the one student she'd let get away, (if one didn't count Squall). Besides, she'd be lying to herself if she said she had anything better to do.

She rolled over, twisting in her sheets and trying desperately to find sleep behind closed eyelids.

The bed was always so damned _cold_…


	10. Lessons

They say misery loves company

We could start a company and make misery

Frustrated Incorporated

I know just what you need

I might just have the key

Put me out of my misery

Suicide kings and drama queens

Forever after happily

Making misery

-Soul Asylum, Misery (also recommended, Runaway Train by same band)

"_My dear instructor._ _I'm hurt. Those are rather cruel words for an aspiring student. A mediocre instructor like you will never understand_." –Seifer, to Quistis

Chapter 9

Quistis' eyes narrowed in determination as she gazed across the desk, meeting a pair of smirking jade.

_Round 1, Seifer._

She was determined that Round 2 of their seemingly inevitable spats would belong to her. Whatever kind things could be said about Quistis Trepe, she was not a good loser. A gracious winner, and fair player, but a good loser?

_Never_.

Admittedly, she hadn't had much experience in the practice. She'd worked hard her entire life to make sure she settled in the upper crust of whatever endeavor she'd chosen to tackle. If not the best, then close enough. She'd rarely had to deal with the bitter aftermath of second place (Squall being a rather large exception.)

Seifer Almasy, however, had always assured the bitter taste of failure in her mouth. The very name used to make her swallow in preparation. Not any more.

Today, she was going to do something she should have done a long time ago.

She'd _teach_ him.

She drew her tongue over her bottom lip, hoping that this endeavor would prove more successful than those previous. He'd gotten the better of her temper yesterday, but that was yesterday. Today was different.

She held his gaze.

_I will teach him if it kills me. I will teach him if it kills me._

"Seifer, did you read the materials I assigned you?"

He studied the ceiling, legs draped on the desk in his familiar posture. "Define 'read'."

_Hell_, thought Quistis. I may well end up killing _him_.

She bit the inside of her cheek

_Patience, Quistis, she urged. Don't wring his neck._

**Yet**.

"Reading means you looked at all of the words on all of the pages, and committed the information within to memory," she replied tersely. "Did you?"

He shrugged.

"Seifer-" her voice bordered on warning, a shadow of her old Instructor's tone rising to her lips.

He glanced up sharply. "This stuff is boring as shit. I couldn't 'commit' it to memory if I had only one fucking brain cell designed especially for the purpose."

Quistis sighed, removing her glasses and pinching her nose in frustration. "The material is dull, yes, but not all of it. You have to realize the implications behind the reading, realize the real-world applications." She stood up. "Seifer, if you don't pass the SeeD written exam, you can't even _take_ the field exam!"

"No shit, really?" he feigned surprise, but his eyes belied his derision.

She narrowed her eyes in kind. "Does being an asshole aide in learning?"

"Obviously not. I'd be a fucking genius, wouldn't I?" He replied sarcastically, but she was nonetheless surprised at his admission.

She walked over, sitting on the desk in front of him, trying desperately to get his attention as she had so miserably failed to do in the past. "Seifer, I can help you learn this. It won't be easy, but it's just another game you have to play to get in."

"Oh, and I should be good at playing games, is that it?"

She sighed, throwing up her arms in exasperation. "I didn't _say_ that."

"Yeah, whatever, fine. I play these little fucking games, get myself a SeeD uniform, and for what? It sure as fuck isn't going to _change_ anything. Can't dress up a sow's purse like a silk ear."

"It's sow's ear like a silk purse." She interjected tiredly, her chin in her hand.

"Yeah, whatfuckingever." He sighed. "Coming back here was a mistake."

She was losing him. She could feel him slip through her fingers, as he had years ago. Only now, it was hopelessness and not ambition that drove him away from her.

_Not this time._

"It's only a mistake if you make it one." She said quietly.

"Tch. What, you're going to feed me that whole, 'I'm in charge of my own destiny shit'?" he scorned.

"It isn't '_shit_.'" She spat. "It's true. You make your own choices. Only fools put their destinies in the hands of other men-."

"Or other sorceresses, am I right?" he spat, posture both angry and defensive.

"-or give them up," she finished lamely.

Inwardly, she sighed, even as her temper flared. Why did it always end this way? With both of them at each other's throats like hungry dogs, each trying to get in the last lick?

"Why do you always have to take the worst possible meaning of what I say?"

"Why do you care what I think _you_ think of me, Trepe? It never bothered you **before** I became your fucking charity case! Asking Squall to fucking '_teach'_ me? What, the shame's not rubbing in well enough? You have to help it along, or what?"

Before she knew what she was doing, she'd lunged forward and shoved him as hard as she could. Surprised, he stumbled back, feet catching as he fell back into the chair, which promptly skidded back into the wall with the force of its occupant.

His head jerked up, eyes furious, but she followed up her shove, Save the Queen a blur of steel and leather as it wrapped around his chest, tying him effectively to the chair. He struggled, shoulder muscles a writhing shift of weak muscle beneath her whip's thick leather twine.

She braced her boot on his chest in a move quick as lightening, yanking the end of her whip and pulling the chest noose tight before looping the end around the bottom rung of the chair, in a location he could not physically reach.

"What the _hell_, Trepe!" he shouted.

Quistis did her best to calm her breathing and her temper, tendrils of hair hanging wildly in her eyes. Between the strands sat one very furious ex-knight. But her own anger was match enough.

And there it was: the position she'd been dying to see him in for years.

"Quit with the pity shit, Almasy. It's beneath you. I _don't_ feel sorry for you. I never have. You made your decisions, you made your mistakes. They were yours to make, and they're yours to make now."

He was still struggling. Quite useless really. Save the Queen was nearly, if not entirely, impossible to break. She'd tested it herself on T-Rexaur teeth, and even Seifer's biting temper couldn't compete with that serration. She continued, confident in her restraint.

She stood before him a woman changed. A master of her own classroom, as it were. For the moment. And all she'd had to do was employ violence.

_Hm__._ _I should have done this years ago._

"The decisions have always been yours. But _you_ seemed determined to throw them away, so _I'm_ going to make a decision for you. You're going to sit here, in this chair, until you can recite every vital concept of those novels from memory."

"The **fuck** I will." He snarled, lurching forward at her.

"Then you're not getting up." She stood unimpressed in front of him, arms folded, waiting for him to realize his quandary.

It was Seifer Almasy. It might take awhile.

"Damnit! You bitch! Untie me!" The whip was making it hard to breathe.

Quistis examined a nail. "Really, Seifer, flattery will get you nowhere." She said dryly, watching with a raised eyebrow as he swore up another storm, lunging forward again as the whip's grip swiftly pinned him back to the chair. The almost three-legged creation rocked precariously, threatening to spill Seifer over on his face.

It was sick, but she was almost enjoying this.

All right, she **was** enjoying this.

She suppressed a smirk at the sight of her ex-pupil strapped firmly to a chair, his expression one of an absolutely furious child ready to pitch an unholy fit. She almost laughed. Almost. Instead, she turned her back on him, walking back to the large desk at the front and retrieving her own copy of 'Guardian Forces- Pros and Cons', flipping it open to the first of her footnotes.

"Now, Seifer, what is the main point that Dr. Glasser makes concerning the benefits of GF's?"

"Go to hell."

"No, I'm sure the well-learned Dr. Glasser made a more 'couth' statement than that. Care to try again?"

"Care to kiss my ass?" The damned whip was strong. He could barely move, and the whip was so tight around him, it constrained his cursing.

"One should never answer a question with a question, it displays a distinct lack of knowledge and bearing. You'd know that if you bothered to Basic SeeD procedure and etiquette." She replied, smiling. "Dr. Glasser documented various scans of the brains of GF users over a period of time, and came to conclude that over extended periods of extreme usage, damage eventually spread to the hippocampus, infringing the formation of new memories as well as old. His theory was a revolutionary addition to the military community, who had, until now, advocated GF usage without reservation. Now, what was theoretically the first GF to be documented in history?"

"Fuck you." He grumbled, still wriggling his arms. He was, however, quickly losing steam. That was the thing she had come to learn about Seifer Almasy. Quick to anger, quick to cool. Quick to re-anger.

It was a seemingly endless cycle.

She smiled wanly. "Not quite. The first documentation was recorded at the base of Mount Palciar, and was thought to be the form of Ifrit. She thumbed to the next page. "Now, what are some of the advantages claimed by GF usage?"

Killing former instructors, he thought to himself.

Seifer's eyes were barely visible slits as he lurched at her again, another string of curse words loosing from his lips. The wobbly chair scraped forward an inch or so. By this time, thought Quistis ruefully, he'll reach me by tomorrow morning.

Seifer grimaced. He was going to kill her if it took all day.

"Really, Seifer, you should work on broadening that vocabulary." She suggested, thumbing to the next page as she crossed her legs, resting her backside against the desk. "Some of the advantages claimed by GF usage include, but are not limited to: enhanced vitality, increased sensory perception, an increase in muscle definition, and an increased focus. Other advantages are particular to the type of GF junctioned."

Seifer glared at her. Although, he had to admit, her words did aid memory, and the woman was fucking smart. She had always been a good teacher, she just had shitty control over her class.

Well, namely, over him. He couldn't really blame her for that. Half of his life, he hadn't been able to control himself either.

"Hmm…another question? What is the proper procedure for a poison counter-spell cocktail when on site?"

"I hate you." He sighed.

"Yes, this once can be a bit tricky, can't it? First one should take care to cast Esuna, followed by a mild Cure or Cura, depending on the severity of the wound. Curaga should almost never be used except in life threatening cases because of its affects on the circulatory system when paired immediately with another status altering spell that targets the blood. Yet _another_ fact you would know if you had thumbed through the SeeD field guide manual." Her eyes met his, full of mirth and a kind of sick mischief he had not seen for years. Nearly sixteen years, to be exact. It was a strange site, uncommon but not unattractive on her.

Narrowing his eyes, he lurched forward once more, feeling with sick assuredness the tip of the chair begin to spill him over. Damned near three-legged chair. He tilted back violently, resulting in the chair's motion in the same fashion.

_Fuck_.

He reeled back with a clamor, the back of his head slapping the floor with a sick crack.

"_Fuck_!"

Suddenly, Quistis' gaze loomed over him, eyes concerned until the torrent of cuss words spilled from his lips, most of them directed at her. After his tirade, she simply looked relieved.

He glared and Quistis smiled.

He was really stuck now. He'd admit, he'd had a few fantasies about the whip when he was her student, but none of them involved being strapped to his chair, sprawled out on the floor and listening to her babble about GF's. And they'd involved a **lot** less fucking clothes.

Instead of helping him up, she simply turned a page in her book. "All right, let's move on to the GF biotech summary. What was the board's decision on GF safety vs. potential risk?"

"I'm going to kill you."

She smirked down at him. "Unlikely, Mr. Almasy, from your current vantage point. Now, the sooner we go through the reading, the sooner you're free to leave."

Surprisingly, he said nothing, simply stared at the wall like he wanted to burn a hole through it.

She shook her head and turned another page. "The board voted, in a 3 to 47 majority in respect to GF usage being a perfectly safe and reasonable modus operandi concerning mission types A, B, and F."

She glanced down at him. "Are you familiar with mission types?"

Seeing as he hadn't gone on a single _official_ one…………

He shook his head. She continued. "Mission type A relates to any mission specific to a distress call from a free state, Mission type B relates to a hostage situation, Mission-"

She droned on, and Seifer, given little other fucking choice, found himself actually listening for a change with only a few thoughts of strangling her when she finally conceded to untie him interrupting thoughts of GF debate and mission protocol.

Three hours later an extremely cranky Seifer Almasy could recite (with fewer than five cuss words per sentence) the main points of each of the books. It only confirmed what Quistis had always believed- that Seifer Almasy was intelligent, but unmotivated.

She wasn't sure being tied to a chair qualified as motivation, but at any rate, this method had worked. She doubted she could tie him to a chair every day; he would eventually catch on and refuse to sit, but the technique had been…….fun…… for today.

"Can I be untied now?" said Seifer, still planted sourly on his back. "I played all your little games, didn't I?" Really, though, he wasn't as pissed as he would've thought. Granted, he hated being treated like a child, and the whip was going to leave a big fucking mark where he'd strained too hard against it, but he HAD learned something. It was a strange feeling, possessing a bunch of knowledge that he knew he was going to need. Gratifying.

Almost. It was still boring as all hell and he was still going to kill her.

"So you did." She agreed, sighing.

However, she was at a loss as to how to get him up. The end of the whip, secured to the back of the chair, was also pinned beneath the fallen chair and the floor, which in turn was near the wall. She'd just have to pick him up from the front.

She reached down, grabbing the back of the chair and digging her heels in as she yanked him up. Despite his skinny appearance, he was heavy.

The chair righted itself and Quistis found herself nearly sitting on his lap. Both took a moment to appreciate the implications of the position before Quistis flushed red and scrambled off of him.

Seconds ticked by. "You're going to have to let me up sometime today, Trepe." Came the caustic snarl.

She sighed. Tying up a wild animal always seemed like such a good idea, until the knowledge seeped in that one was going to have to UNtie an even more irate one. "Promise you'll control yourself?"

"Scout's honor," he seethed.

She walked around him, uncoiling Save the Queen in one graceful motion and stepping back, quickly, as if she were releasing an alligator. She didn't trust Seifer's temper, and seeing as she was perpetually on the wrong end of it, caution was commendable.

He jumped quickly to his feet, anger and annoyance still aflame in his gaze.

"Learning wasn't so bad, was it?"

He grimaced, stretching. "Depends on your vantage point, doesn't it?" He growled, advancing on her. "Mine was rather uncomfortable."

She didn't move, although she didn't seem pleased at his advance. "You promised-"

He sneered. "I've never been a fucking boy scout, Trepe."

She saw the move coming, but before she could dodge, he had her trapped in front of the desk, an arm on either side of the polished top. His body was just inches from hers, just as it had been in the Training Room. This was how he threatened her. Proximity. Physicality.

Because mentally, she scared the shit out of him.

There was nothing worse than letting a woman like Trepe into your head. It was like letting a mongoose in a snake farm. Or a snake in a mongoose farm. Whatever. He didn't even know what the fuck a mongoose was, come to think of it. He needed to stop using the analogy.

He leaned forward a little, just enough to catch the scent of raspberries and the faint scent of her alarm. It was impossible to say which he liked better. "You like to be in control, don't you?" he said.

"Not as much as you do." She replied coldly, form held rigid, unbending beneath him. Seifer become conscious in that moment of just how much it would take to bend a woman like Trepe.

A lot more than what broke him, most likely.

He chuckled, surprising her, his breath warm on her neck. It was a strangely disconcerting sensation, even more so than simply his proximity alone. He pulled back, regarding her with amusement in his eyes. Quistis realized, in that moment, that she would never be able to predict him.

He gave her a mocking little bow, a derisively graceful admission that their little spar was over, for the moment. "Well met, Trepe, well met." He sneered. "Are we finished in our pleasantries for the day?"

"Garden will be docking tonight in Trabia for two week's time, just so you're informed as to why tonight there's going to be a lot of noise near the bay entrances. Garden has been contracted for several missions to rid towns from various creature plagues that the mild spring allowed to breed in formidable numbers. I want you to meet me outside in the Quad tomorrow, fire magic equipped and gunblade polished and ready." She slid off of the desk, reaching into a leather book bag and pulling out a hardcover black book. "This is the official SeeD manual, which I'm sure you already recognize."

He smirked. They were great for starting fires, those SeeD manuals.

"It's the most important thing you'll learn both for the written and the mission exam." She continued.

He snorted, grabbing the book from her on his way out. "I already know how to swing a sword, Instructor."

Quistis' sighed as her eyes fell upon the empty room, leaning heavily back against the desk, exhausted from the day's lesson.

"You've just never known _when_ to swing it." She muttered, as the door whirred shut behind her.


	11. Truces and Potato Soup

_I hear the ticking of the clock_

_I'm lying here_

_The room's pitch dark……_

_I wonder where you are tonight….._

_And the night goes by so very slow_

_Oh, I hope it won't end though_

_Alone_

_Till now_

_I always got by on my own_

_I never really cared until I met you………………._

-Heart, Alone (a really appropriate Seifer/Quistis song- look it up!)

Chapter 10

Quistis sighed as her dormitory opened up, allowing her into the now dark room. She was exhausted, physically and mentally. All she wanted now was a warm cup of tea and a hot-

"Hello, stranger."

Quistis shrieked, her books flying in a spastic arc as the fell back against the door, gasping for breath.

"Oh come on, Quistis. Who else has a key to this room?"

Sighing, Quistis flicked on the lights. "Xu."

She was starting to regret giving her friend a copy of that key. Xu tended to show up unexpectedly…and often.

Her friend's dark, laughing eyes met her gaze from her perch on Quistis' small white couch. "A little jumpy, are we?" she mused. "You really should lay off that coffee, Quis. It'll rot your nerves."

Quistis knelt to retrieve her scattered books. "You're probably right."

Xu's eyes turned serious. "I don't know what the hell Leonhart was thinking, putting you on that lapdog's case. As if once wasn't bad enough-"

Quistis just sighed as she set down her book bag. "I can handle him, Xu."

Xu just laughed. "_Handle_ him? Quistis, nobody '_handles'_ Seifer Almasy. That….'boy' is a nuisance, not to mention a security liability. He's dangerous. Have you forgotten his recent attempt to, oh, I don't know," Xu waved her wrist, "Destroy the world?"

Quistis just shook her head, bracing the heel of her hand against her skull. It was pounding. "That was two years ago, Xu. A lot's changed since then. Whether you believe it or not, _he's_ changed. Haven't you seen him?"

"Skin and bones does not a threat eliminate." Persisted her friend. "You've always had a soft spot for him, Quistis. In fact, you've got too many damned soft spots for your own good. Hyne knows why. It hurt you as an Instructor-"

Quistis dropped her hand. "Can we please not talk about this?" she asked wearily. "You want some tea?"

"Sure." Xu shrugged. "I'm just worried about you, Quistis. I don't want to see you get hurt."

Quistis shrugged. "I can handle him." She replied, removing two cups and two saucers from her cupboard.

"It's not you handling _him_ I'm particularly worried about," muttered Xu, but luckily, her friend didn't hear her.

Xu leaned over the couch. "So, how's the _Princess_? Are you going to watch those films with the rest of them tonight?" Quistis had to smile at Xu's own unique way of pronouncing Rinoa's nickname; sour with a tinge of scorn.

Xu did not like Rinoa; had never liked her. Xu claimed that every day Rinoa lived and breathed was an insult to feminism, constantly scorning Rinoa's seemingly endless need to be rescued both from evil sorceresses, spiders, and doing her own laundry……………….

Quistis' own feelings towards Rinoa were mixed- she would never be able to fully understand Rinoa's lack of independence. She resented it, in a way, but unlike Xu, Quistis considered reliance Rinoa's luxury, an opulence of dependence that Quistis had never had the benefit of knowing.

She and Xu, and to a degree, Selphie, were bred soldiers, weaned on discipline, hand-fed structure, and stocked in dorms with white-washed walls and tarnished desk lamps. She had always envied the young sorceresses' easy grace and feminine magnetism because it was different from anything she had known- it was not a requirement in a soldier, not something bred into the matrix of killer minds. Men and women in Garden were raised to protect, to sacrifice, to hold fast to their mother of steel and protect her at all costs. Quistis' own feminine magnets seemed to be permanently broken, and she had never considered herself graceful.

Quistis just shook her head disapprovingly at Xu as she sorted through the top shelf for her tea bags. Rinoa, who was now living at Garden (it was rather odd, a Sorceress intermixed with military, but everyone seemed used to it now), was holding a small get together in her small, private dorm. Tonight was home video night, videos from childhood, from banquets; videos intermixed with laughter and painful memories and plenty of tequila. Really, she wanted to sleep, but she'd promised Selphie she'd be there, and the short brunette was promise-crazy.

"Yes, I'm going, and you're coming with me."

Xu rolled her eyes. "I think not."

Quistis paused in her rummaging to shake a spoon at her longtime friend. "I am not going to sit through an evening being the odd man-"

"Woman-" interjected Xu, ever politically-correct.

Quistis rolled her eyes. "It's a bloody saying, Xu. Fine, odd _woman_ out in a room full of couples. You'll have to do as my pity date."

"It's always been my lifelong dream to be someone's pity date. Are you sure you aren't going just to spend quality time with Mr. Personality?" asked her friend, smirking at her as she rested her chin on folded arms.

"For the millionth time, I don't have feelings for Squall." Quistis chuckled ruefully. "That was a long time ago. I think……probably the only reason I ever wanted Squall is _because_ I couldn't have him." Not completely true, but close enough.

Yes, long ago, she had played at flirting, clumsily tried her hand at seducing the young Commander the way young cats play with shy, wounded animals, thinking there is less danger of getting hurt. She was younger then.

_Hopeful._

_Stupid._

Squall was beautiful, aloof, gifted, depth unmistakable in his slate blue eyes. She _had_ loved him, despite herself, despite her denial; his reaction was no less easier because she had expected it. She still found him attractive now, she supposed, in an art gallery sense of the word, but her heart had long since shied away, leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of the friendship she had to settle for. If one could call it that. She had been rejected as a sister, a friend, and a lover already, and she really wasn't sure there were any more grounds left on which to reject, although he didn't seem to mind her as his own personal paperwork secretary.

While she felt close to the others: Irvine, Selphie, Zell, even Rinoa in the vaguest sense, she never felt as if she and Squall had ever closed what wide, cosmic gap existed between them. Or that they ever would.

She located the tea box, stood up on tiptoes to knock it forward with the crook of her finger. "You can't tell me that no man lately has turned your head, Xu."

Xu just chuckled. "My dear Quistis, you have enough estrogen for the both of us. I excel at being alone. You just pretend to be good at it."

"I **am** good at-" The box slipped, knocking down into the teacup, which shattered at her feet. She stared at the pieces, mesmerized by the play of the light on the crushed rim.

"_Eat them up-_

_Go to my room, I promise-"_

She blinked, and the voices shattered.

Much like the teacup at her feet.

"Quistis? Are you all right?" Xu, concerned.

She realized at the moment that she was gripping spoon very tightly, and that the cold feeling in her cheeks probably meant that her blood had drained from them. "Um. Fine. One of my favorite tea cups, that's all."

Xu frowned and pursed her lips. "You're working too hard. You need to get some sleep."

"No, I promised Selphie I'd go." She replied, kneeling to pick up the larger pieces of cracked porcelain before sweeping the rest up into a dustpan.

Xu shook her head as she got up from the couch, helping her friend pick up the rest of the pieces. "You try to make _everyone_ happy, Quis, try to be in a million places at once and juggle a million things. It's not healthy."

"Xu, you're too damned young to be my mother." Muttered Quistis darkly, taking the pieces from Xu and throwing them in the trash. "Even if you do act a hundred and fifty."

"Looking who's talking, prune." Xu smiled and hugged her tightly, a rare show of affection for the young woman. "Quistis, you're a better person than most of us. Impractical, but well-meaning."

Quistis just shook her head. "That's just your nice way of saying I'm a fool."

Xu chuckled, and squeezed her tighter. "Maybe. But a good one." She pulled back. "I'll pay a courtesy visit to tell them you're not coming."

"But-"

"Quistis Trepe, you look like death warmed over. Get to bed."

"Gee, thanks."

"That's an order. I currently outrank you, you know." Xu looked sternly at her. "Now, eat some dinner, and get some sleep. And don't worry, I'll tell hyper-active to stay off your case, that you're sick with the energy plague or something."

"Don't do that. She'll throw me a get-well party." Muttered Quistis.

Her dark-haired friend raised an eyebrow.

"Selphie would throw a party for a toenail clipping, I swear. Garden hasn't docked long-term for nearly a month and I think she's gone stir-crazy." Insisted Quistis. "Although, the Winter Festival is coming up…I'm sure that will distract her long enough for the rest of us to take a breath. It will be nice to have a party while we're in Trabia, at least."

Xu shrugged. "What you really need is a good get-laid party."

"Xu!"

"Well, it's true. What do you have, nearly two thousand years of celibacy now?"

Quistis rolled her eyes in response. "I can't tell if you're good for me or terrible for me."

Her friend shook her head. "I'm great for you. I'm going." She replied off-handedly, pausing in the doorway. "And Quis?"

"Hmm."

"You want me to order room service? I'll bet Instructor Glyphias makes house calls-"

She threw a pillow at her friend, but the doors shut just in time.

Quistis sighed. Xu, in public, was the image of discipline, but with Quistis, her long time friend, Xu had never been shy about telling Quistis exactly any and everything that was on her mind.

Sometimes she really wished her friend wasn't so generous.

Yawning, she padded over to her bed and flopped onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Tomorrow was another day. Another long, trying day.

She lay still, watching the shadows play along her walls, the room silent save for the grinding sounds of Garden preparing to dock. Her hand spread out alongside her in a slow, thoughtful arc, tracing the empty space beside her.

……

….

"Will Seifer Almasy please report to the Headmaster's office immediately?"

Seifer opened his eyes as the first rays of sunlight hit them, warm red drawing him up from whatever hellish place he'd just been. Nightmares were a given in his line of sleep, after all.

"Dream's a voluptuous woman, reality's a flat-chested bitch." He muttered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He frowned, wondering at just who had made up that stupid sentence, never mind what the hell prompted him to say that.

Whoever quoted that line was obviously a moron. Shit, all his **dreams** were A-cups with PMS.

"I repeat, will Seifer Almasy please report to the Headmaster's office." A low, ringing voice sounded in his ears.

Shit. What could that be for?

He'd just gotten up. Hell, he hadn't had _time_ to fuck anything up yet.

Sighing, he ran his hands through his hair as he yawned and stretched, wincing at the painful pull of muscles still sore from last night's training exercise. Leonhart hadn't gone easy on him, that was for sure. The combat had been swift, silent, Seifer moving to correct himself as each curve of Squall's sword swung barely short, showing Seifer his errors, his openings. Training with Squall hadn't been anything akin to pleasant, or anything remotely resembling a bond of friendship, but it was not as unbearable as he thought it might be. They hadn't killed each other, at any rate, or added more scars to two already heavily decorated bodies. It was tolerable.

Would he ever admit that to Quistis?

_Hell no._

The shower was cold, indicating that Garden hadn't set up its ground water supply yet. Or maybe it had. It was Trabia, after all. The whole damned place was one big ice cube.

He dressed quickly, pulling on the standard cadet uniform and grabbing the thick black down jacket that had been issued to all cadets in preparation for the upcoming cold climate, so that he could leave Cid's office directly for his meeting with Quistis.

Quickly securing Hyperion at his belt, he walked up to Cid's office, still half awake and more than half curious as to why his presence had been requested.

He tensed as soon as the doors opened, felt his insides coil up and nearly gagged with the panic that shot through him. He could sense something, and that feeling broiled up in him, the same fire that for the past two years he had tried to douse with gin and tonic.

"Ah, good to see you, Seifer." Cid, looking up. "Please come in."

The scent of lilacs wafted over to him, curling under his nose and boiling the acid in his belly.

His eyes narrowed.

"Matron."

The older woman's dark eyes met his from her vantage point behind her husband. "Hello, Seifer. It is good to have you home with us." She said softly, eyes heartrendingly gentle and sad. It was difficult to meet her eyes. They were filled with the same guilt, the same flavor of poison he tasted on his lips every morning, the same toxin that would not let him eat, or sleep, or dream. Even now, the Sorceress War was a mess of tangles in his head; screams, Galbadia, her voice, her hands, her lips………

Her eyes now haunted him for deeds only faintly remembered, words and steel caresses lost in a sea of perpetual madness-

She walked to him, embraced him, arms trembling. His body tensed up, ice pouring through his veins at her touch. He closed his eyes.

Hers was no longer the touch of a mother. It brought no comfort. It would never bring comfort again. He inhaled her scent, sweet and perfumed and poisoned with memories.

_Seifer, get down from that branch. You're going to break your neck at such a height-_

_Good little boy. Destroy them all-_

_Bow before your Queen, maggot-_

_Is that a scrape? Here, let me kiss it away-_

_Do not fail me again, or I shall make it hurt worse-_

She felt him stiffen, and pulled back, eyes further touched with sadness. He almost drowned in it. He was choking on her perfume, smothered by the look in her eyes. The world around her bent and twisted into a single, terrible memory, a thread of repulsion and culpability so thick it nearly squeezed the air out of him.

_Was there no end to their guilt?_

And what could Cid know of this? What could he say to the man who had once been like a father to him?

_Sorry, Cid?_

Cid cleared his throat, confusion clearly trapped behind his normally jovial smile. "I'll leave you two to talk," he muttered, getting up from his desk. He glanced at his wife one last time before leaving the room.

It did not go unnoticed to Seifer how Cid watched his wife, worried at her, knew that when he touched her, he never touched all of her. There was a part of her, now, that would forever be unknown to him, a dark shadow beside the wife and caretaker that each night lay her body down beside him but left a corner of her mind forever closed to the man beside her.

This part Seifer knew, knew all too well.

She could never again be Matron for him, not truly. The thought caused pain to rise to the surface. His childhood, his innocence was gone now, forever lost by the taint on both their skins.

The door clicked softly shut behind them.

"It is good to have you here. To have all my children here again." She said gently, smiling at him.

"I was never one of them. You know that." He replied quietly. "I never will be."

"You always were." She insisted. "Just give it time."

He studied the floor, hands shaking at his sides. "Do you remember……..those things we did?" he asked, his voice once again that of a little boy, pleading with his mother to take away the demons from under his bed, to make the world right again.

Tears sprang to her eyes. "It comes and goes." She replied. "The memories are never fully there, but neither are they fully gone. I can bear them more easily now. You will, too."

"It'll never go away, will it?" he muttered. Tortured, broken, her child stood before her, his wounds the cuts and scrapes she herself had imparted upon him.

At one time, in younger days made sweeter by innocence, she would have kissed such pains away. That innocence was forever tainted, now. Now, she could do nothing.

She met his eyes, and slowly shook her head, tears spilling down the sides of her fine porcelain cheeks at the sight of her child's broken hopes. It was a broken man that stood before her, a shell of the boy she had tried to shape so delicately as a child. She cried, then, tears choking her dark eyes because she could give him nothing. Not even hope.

"I don't know," she whispered, drawing him into her embrace once more, feeling his resistance slowly ebb as he laid his head upon her shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut against her skin. She could feel his pain, his shame at the way tears sprang to his eyes but did not fall. She wanted to heal him, but that was impossible. The wound was too deep for her to touch. And so she stroked his head, gently, guiltily, staring off into a place far from the walls that trapped her.

"The things that have come to pass, Seifer, they were done by people different from the ones that stand in this room at the moment. The past is dead, gone, like her…………and the people that we once were are dead with it." She shut her eyes. "We must live in this time, Seifer, as the people that survived it." He tensed and she pulled away, forcing him to meet her eyes. Such a beautiful child; he had always been so dear to her. "The person for whom you carry your guilt is dead, Seifer. Leave his shadows in the past."

He shook his head, looking away, shame still written clearly across his beautiful features. Her words were too much now, but later, she knew, he would think of them, and they would bring him some measure of comfort. She had done what she could for him…what she could for herself.

"Go on, now." She said. "If you need anything, don't hesitate to come to us. I…we won't be far away."

Seifer turned away, nodding, the whisper of his thanks leaving his lips with barely enough force to reach her ears. But she heard him. She always had.

She always would.

She watched the door long after it had closed behind him. He was in Quistis' hands now, and she would take good care of him. She always had. She had always tried to take such good care of all of them.

It had been her idea to put them together again, for Quistis to guide him back. Guide him home again, back to sanity.

She had never seen two children more alike. Both starving for attention, but of the two, Quistis had learned quickly the appropriate ways to get it. So fragile, her little Quistis, but beneath it all lay a rock, a solid spirit that the group would come to depend on when Squall's strength faltered. And Seifer, her little firefly, his drive and assuredness would be a light to the others, she was sure of it.

The children would all have their roles; Squall would become her leader, Selphie and Zell the light-hearted that would keep the group sane, Irvine the calm, Ellone the guide, and Rinoa, when she joined years later, would become their innocence. She saw it all of her children, saw it in their eyes the way a mother gazelle watches the clumsy stumbles of her baby and knows how fast one day it will run.

They would be great, her children. They would do great things. Even now, Seifer was no exception in Edea's motherly mind.

Quistis, always trying to be so cool and collected, and Seifer, all fire and ambition. They would heal each other, in time.

Edea smiled.

_He will have such beautiful wings,_ she thought. _If he ever chooses to fly_.

….

….

…

Quistis squinted beneath the glare of the sunlight as she walked out into the Quad, pulling on a yellow suede jacket and pulling her flips out of the front, muttering as a chunk of hair caught on one of the brown glass buttons. The Quad was not like Balamb's, but a temporary structure that was rolled out at each docking site for student use. It consisted of a few benches, a few trash receptacles, and a few oddly formed snowmen with certain parts of their anatomy exaggerated.

The afternoon had been a lazy one, consisting of few missions and thus even fewer stacks paperwork for her to file, a welcome break from the normal monstrosity Squall hauled on her. Absently, she wondered what Xu had told them, if even Squall was being sympathetic.

The snow-covered mountains loomed in the distance, a distant reminder that some things had yet to be tamed by human cities. She took a deep breath, inhaling the frigid spirit of the snowy peaks in a cold lungful of air.

She tugged on her right mitten as she carefully balanced the two cups of steaming soup and two waters in a paper cup holder with the other. She mustn't drop her peace offering, especially not the one she'd had to fight in line for.

She spotted him just at the edge of the Quad, form slightly slouched in one of the benches, Hyperion laid out alongside him. That spine had held the haughty polish of a lion once, of a creature that knows full well the grace and beauty they possess. Now, however, his form was beaten into a disdainful hunch, pose tired.

Saddening, the way failure could erode a man.

"Hungry?" she asked, sitting down next to him and holding up a carton of soup. His head jerked up, surprised, shoulders jumping a little in reflex. Apparently, he'd been lost in thought.

"Cream of potato." She offered in what she hoped was a persuasive tone. He was far too skinny.

He took a look at the soup, eyes briefly flashing with hunger, but jerked his head in a negative response. "I can't keep anything down." He muttered.

Reaching down, she pulled up the cup of water. She knew that: she could smell the scent of vomit on him every morning, faint like slow decay.

"Here." She said, proffering the cup and the soup, shoving both towards him. "Take a small sip of soup, and a small drink of water. Little by little, just ease it down. The water will dilute it."

He cast her an appraising look. She just smiled, confident that hunger would win over his mistrust.

"If you say so, but if I puke all over you don't bitch at me." He shrugged, uncapping the lid of the soup and taking the spoon she offered. His stomach growled at the smell.

Quistis nodded, pleased. It was a safe wager to bet on a man's stomach.

She tilted her head back, regarding the snowflakes with peace. The snow didn't seem suffocating here, sitting next to Seifer, as if the bottomless pit of his misery would suck it in. It was an odd feeling, taking comfort from a man she had once held as an enemy.

"Any cyanide in this?"

"Just a pinch." She replied offhandedly, dipping her spoon into her own cup.

"Fair enough," he replied, digging in.

Silence fell over them, both lost in thought and cream of potato.

A truce, for now. A welcome, if awkward one.

The soup was at just the right temperature; the cream and soft potato sliding easily down his sore throat. He took a sip of water, leaning back against the bench in what might have been the beginning throes of relaxation.

"It's nice out here." She said. He glanced at her over the rim of his cup. She was staring up at the sky, hands wrapped around her soup cup for warmth. Snowflakes snagged in her lashes, glittered in her hair. She was smiling, the kind of smile he'd seen only rarely on her face. It was the kind of smile that a person locked up like fine china, taking out for only certain people to look at.

_Why didn't she smile more often? _

"What are you thinking about?" he found himself asking. His belly was filled out a little, warm and taut with the soup. It was a warm, completed feeling, a full sort of feeling he had not experienced for a long time.

She glanced over at him, eyes rich with memories carried down on snowflakes. "Just times at the orphanage." She sent him a mock glare. "Remembering all those times you decapitated my snowmen."

He chuckled. He did have a vague recollection of laying siege to many a snowy battlefield with a long tree branch, one very irate little Quisty on his heels. He looked at her. "Well, little did you know, I was saving your bossy little ass," he replied, a familiar teasing lilt in his voice.

It had been too long.

"Really, how so?" she asked, playing along.

Seifer regarded her with a raised eyebrow. Quistis Trepe: playful. Interesting. It was a pleasant change from bitchy and bossy, that was for sure.

"Well," he continued, trying to look serious. "Really, those creations of yours were evil snow demons, and I was but saving my fair lady from her own malicious art."

At that, she really did laugh. "Well, in that case, I am truly sorry for the face wash that I so brashly bestowed upon such a valiant knight."

He winced at the word knight, and she didn't miss it. "No apologies necessary." He replied. "I took a great pleasure in my craft."

Quistis got to her feet, throwing the remnants of her lunch into a nearby trash receptacle. It made her uneasy, not knowing if they were still speaking of snowmen or sorceresses.

She patted her whip at her side. "Ready?"

Seifer scraped the inside of the now nearly empty soup. "Where are we going?"

"To help out with the monster reductions." She replied. "It will be good practice. You've junctioned Fire magic, correct?"

"Yeah." He'd had them all but thrown at him, being as that same girl was still working there. Fucking women.

"All right then. Let's go." She replied, turning and heading out into the snow-laden fields.

The snow was knee-deep in places on Quistis; the snow reached just below Seifer's. Quistis cast a glance over at him, envying his height. The walk continued, and time stretched past, seemingly frozen itself by the chilly air.

"Fucking cold out here." Came a gruff voice behind her.

She turned slightly. "Don't be such a crybaby."

He stiffened. "Who's being a crybaby? It was just a damned observation."

"Hyne. Is it possible for you to be pleasant for five minutes a day?" she asked.

He blew into his hands. "Dunno. Never tried."

They walked a little further in, Quistis pressing her hands together and admiring the way the snow clung to the distant trees, sloughing off in graceful ice tips. Seifer meanwhile, to his own chagrin, found himself admiring her admiration.

_Lack of decent scenery_, he told himself. _That's it._

A distant hiss stretched across the plain suddenly, an incoming jeer as the neared the beginning of a hill's incline. Blood Souls. Three of them, moving quickly, their hiss like the approaching boil of a teakettle. Quistis cracked her whip, and one staggered in its aerial pursuit, screeching as it fell to the ground. A young one, apparently. Another crack of the whip, and the creature was finished.

She felt heat whir past her, saw one of the Blood Souls engulfed in flame as it disintegrated before her eyes, which could only mean Seifer had junctioned Firaga. Obviously, he wasn't as rusty in casting as she had assumed.

She advanced, whip thrashing out once again to strike the final Blood Soul. This one was apparently older, and was simply stunned by the blow. It provided enough lapse in the creature's reaction time, however, to allow Seifer time enough to advance for a physical attack. He rushed it, a powerful arc thrusting the hideous creature into the ground, the creature's pale blood oozing into the snow.

Seifer yawned. "Well that was-"

"Watch out!" Quistis' eyes widened as she rushed forward, lowering her shoulder as she knocked Seifer out of the way. However, that left her open to the white, snarling blur that had burst from the snow, eyes burning into her skin as she hit the ground- hard.

A Snow Lion, apparently drawn by the sounds of battle and the almost airy guts of the Blood Souls. And, of course, by the unmistakable scent of humans. Snow Lions, fat, oversized, and slow animals, routinely made up for their lack of speed by burrowing under the snow, waiting for vibrations and smells to alert them of approaching prey. When an unfortunate soul happened by, the Snow Lion would use a burst of energy to tunnel up and ambush their prey, snapping their oversized jaws around their meal and crushing it beneath its massive weight.

In short, not a fun way to die.

Seifer whirled, his annoyance quickly fading as he heard Quistis' yell and saw the hulking form of the lion eclipse her body in the snow.

Shit. He couldn't very well cast Firaga- the blast would harm Quistis as well. He lunged forward, drawing up Hyperion as, with a shout, he brought it down between the creature's well-muscled shoulders.

Quistis had her hands up, tangled in the beast's open jaws as she tried to prevent them from closing around her throat. The creature's breath stunk like a typical meat-eater's, like blood and decay, a suffocating stench.

"Fira!" she shouted, the heat of her fingers sinking into the snow lion's flesh like crimson blades. It screamed, muscles coiled as it begun to snap its head down to rid itself of the pain-causing meal beneath it.

The snow lion went slack, suddenly, and Quistis felt a hot warmth spurt onto her stomach beneath the heavy weight of the hulking beast. It rolled off of her, leaving her to stare up at Seifer's smirking gaze, hand lowered in an offer to help her up.

She glared at him, but accepted his hand as he pulled her effortlessly up onto her feet. She stared down at her now blood-soaked clothes. "Great, Seifer. Why didn't you just spray me with Eau de Monster?"

"Well, _Hyne_." Muttered Seifer, sheathing Hyperion at his side as he stalked past her. "You're welcome."

She stared after him, open-mouthed. "_I'm_ welcome? I just-"

Seifer held up a hand, and she was about to rage at him further when she paused as well, a prickling sensation spreading across her skin as it did, almost clairvoyantly, before any upcoming battle. Frowning, each turned, to be greeted by a most unwelcome site.

"Oh, fuck me." Cursed Seifer, and for once, Quistis' sentiments echoed along the same line.

A new enemy had slunk from the corner of the tree thicket, the large russet head like a giant spore carried on thick brown tentacles. It approached the fallen snow lion with interest, one huge brown tentacle lifting out to coil around the corpse, the suction cups on the bottom part draining the carcass dry.

A Marlboro, now no more than ten feet away from them.

The duo held completely still, both reluctant to move. Quistis herself resisted the urge to run. She was in no particular hurry to fight it- even with Squall and Zell at her sides, all three of them trained to a 'T', they'd had tremendous trouble bringing the huge fungus-like creature down.

She held Seifer's gaze, willing him not to move. The creature didn't have very good eyesight- if they stayed completely still perhaps it would feed and move on. She doubted it, though. She was soaked through with blood and Marlboro's were well known for their olfactory senses.

Where the hell did it come from, anyway? Marlboros were normally confined to the islands, or near the fisherman's horizon….admittedly, she had heard rumors of the spore-like zygotes migrating over on the hulls of ships….but Trabia? Were the damned things air-lifting now? The Marlboros had an almost Malthusian life cycle, but talk about embryonic evolution... The population was obviously undergoing an overshoot this year.

What a crappy population to overshoot……..

Seifer glanced over at her. "What do you want to do now?" he hissed through gritted teeth, interrupting her scientific evaluation. "It's too close for a retreat."

"Don't move." Hissed Quistis in kind. "Maybe it doesn't see us."

"Screw it." muttered Seifer. "Let's run."

The Marlboro let out a deafening hiss, tentacles wavering agitatedly. The carcass of the snow lion flew past them as they jumped apart to avoid the flying meal.

"Maybe it doesn't see us," mimicked Seifer sarcastically as he drew Hyperion, snow flying as he rushed the now livid Marlboro. Marlboros were well known for many things, not the least of which their well-documented hatred of humans.

"Seifer don't-" began Quistis, but it was too late. Seifer struck in one of the airbladders. Dark gas billowed out from the wound, immersing Seifer in the creature's trademark Bad Breath. He faltered back, Hyperion clattering to the ground as he clawed at his eyes, swearing and stumbling. The creature, obviously a veteran SeeD hunter, lost no time in following up its magic with a hard slap with its tentacles, sending Seifer sprawling back in a spray of white.

Quistis lost no time in action. She raised her hand, fingers curled as she concentrated on the huddled form in the snow. "Esuna!" she shouted. As soon as she finished, she felt a heavy object slam into her side, knocking the breath out of her.

Damned multiple arms.

She scrambled to her feet, clutching her side as she once again faced the now extremely agitated Marlboro, green puss spewing out the side just above its tentacles where Seifer had struck.

_Seifer, you idiot_, she thought to herself. Still gripping her side with her right hand, she once again held up her dominant casting hand. "Reflect!" She darted in under the spell's brief protective front, hand closing around Hyperion's handle and darting back before she got outside the spell's effectual area.

And just in time. She watched beneath the magical haze of vibrant green strings as the Marlboro's Bad Breath attack was flung back at her enemy. The creature thrashed, unaffected, but at least the toxic cocktail hadn't hit her.

She drew back again, eyes narrowed as she regarded her enemy with a gaze as icy as the snow, mind churning as quickly and efficiently as a machine as she milled over ingrained strategy at a near beyond human speed.

She didn't want to use any more magic at that point; the effects were already beginning to weaken her. A GF would be nice.

_Shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which gets full the faster_, she thought ruefully.

Her hands were currently full enough already.

She jumped back just as another tentacle swept across the battlefield, just missing her face by a mere hair's length. She glanced back at Seifer, who was struggling to his feet.

"Seifer!" she shouted, throwing Hyperion in a clumsy arc that landed just before his feet. He gripped the handle, pushing himself up halfway. He put his hand up even as he crouched, coughing blood onto the snow. "Fira!"

The Marlboro screeched as the tentacle it had raised to swipe at Quistis quickly turned to ashes. It thrashed out another one to dispel the newly risen threat, Seifer, but soon found its arm entangled with the barbs of Save the Queen.

Quistis threw her body weight into the lunge as she jerked her whip back, watching with satisfaction as the barbs sunk deep into the tentacle, eliciting another screech from the Marlboro. It was a foolish move, attaching herself to an arm whose single strength could easily rip her apart, but she couldn't allow Seifer to sustain another hit. He'd easily be knocked out, and then they'd both be screwed. She held her ground, tearing her whip into the arm, buying Seifer time enough to conjure up a spell. The tentacle wavered, but she dug her feet in, trying to stay as far away as possible from the putrid smelling, gaping excuse for a mouth that all cursed Marlboros possessed. If she could just distract it……………..

Unexpected, however, was what happened next.

The Marlboro raised its injured arm, ignoring the barbs sinking deeper into its flesh as it picked up a very surprised Quistis, flinging her across the field in a move similar in ease to a human wrist flick. Seifer watched her sail across the field, vanishing in a cloud of white as her shout of surprise was abruptly cut off.

_Shit_.

His veins already running hot, he summoned the fire spell again to his palm, watching with dim satisfaction as another one of the creature's arms turned to dust. It had a plethora of arms, however, and turning the thing into an armless Bad Breath machine wasn't going to do him any good.

The Marlboro, having lost a fair share of arms and the remaining bit of its already irascible temper, let out an ear-piercing screech, slamming him to the ground once more. He rolled, limping to his feet as he cut a diagonal at the side with less tentacles, letting out a shout as he drove the blade through the blubbery sides, twisting the handle halfway through. He ducked under the snow just as he heard the creature hiss, a sure sign that it was about to release its poisonous spores. He waited a minute, completely immersed in snow, before crawling back out, holding his breath and shutting his eyes for safe measure. His fingertips burned, exhausted, as he conjured up the only other spell he'd bothered to equip.

Confusion.

And by some act of Hyne, the spell actually took effect. The creature whirled, its tentacles spinning like some demented top gone bad, and Seifer had a new problem-

Getting the hell out of the way.

He backed up, feet tangled in a fallen tree hidden by the snowfall. The thundering beast bore down on him, snow flying in its wake as a tentacle caught him in the right shoulder, sending him sprawling back down to the ground.

The Marlboro hissed-

And exploded.

Warm bits of blubbery flesh rained down on the snow-laden field, green blood hot and sticky on his cheeks. He tried in vain to put up his arm and shield himself from the bloody blast, shutting his eyes tightly until he was sure the last sticky drop had rained down upon his face.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Quistis standing in the center of the destruction, teeth clenched as she gripped her side, breathing hard. He could almost feel the energy radiating off of her, a blue aura slowly fading away around her form. Degenerator, no doubt.

She met his eyes. And collapsed, crumpling to her hands and knees on the snowy field like a puppet without strings.

He got to his feet, slowly, ambling over to her and looking down at her crumpled form. Blood gathered in the corner of her mouth- a sign that she'd bitten her cheek, or worse, internal injuries. He touched her side, eliciting a hiss from her. He concentrated, watching her form constrict as the blue, healing magic surged through his veins into her side. The muscles under his hand tensed, a sure sign the magic was sinking in. She was still grimacing in pain, and so he channeled it again, aching muscles protesting with the effort. It was a strange feeling, the prickle sensation of her skin under his, the tremor in his hand as the magic spread from his body to hers. He had never healed anyone before…….or been healed.

He felt a hand on his cheek, felt a cold, healing sensation stream from the contact. The aching in his lower belly ceased, and the throbbing prickle in his brain gradually ebbed to nothing. Curaga. He felt her aura in the spell, the gentle pulse of her essence beating into his veins within the healing chill of the spell. It was beautiful……disconcerting……strange. He almost wished she'd left him alone.

_Almost_.

She sat up, not removing her hand from his cheek as another cold wave shuddered through him. He looked up into her eyes, her iris' containing that chilled sapphire he was so used to seeing, but now, with a kind of light he didn't understand.

Caring? Compassion? He put his hand over hers, puzzled. No one had ever looked at him that way before.

Her eyes dimmed, and she pulled her hand away, getting to her feet. Seifer followed suit, still unsure of what had been exchanged between him, or what that look in her eyes had meant. They were both shaking, a mix of magic and adrenaline coursing though their nervous systems.

"Damned walking fungus." Quistis curled her lip as she looked down at the crusted green and brown bits that remained of their foe, now plastered to her once spotless jacket.

"Where the hell did it come from?" he asked, looking similarly disgusted as he wiped what remained of a suction cup off of his shoulder.

Quistis looked over at him. "It probably attatched itself to the hull of a ship or the belly of an aircraft in its immature zygote stage, dropped off probably just outside Trabia. The population explosion this spring probably created the ideal feeding conditions for it," she replied, shrugging. "It just followed the food."

"Probably," he agreed, watching as she knelt to retrieve her whip from the charred remains of one coiled tentacle. "Nobody'll believe we took it out, just the two of us." He remarked, looking around at the gore now seeping into the once-pure snow.

"No? Seifer, we're practically _wearing_ our enemy."

He laughed. "True." A pause. "What now?"

She cast him a weary look, holding out her arms to display her well-soiled clothes. "Well, I'd like to go back, unless of course, you'd like to stay and complete a bloody ensemble. Perhaps we could pick up some Wendigo entrail hats."

He grinned at the sour look on her face. "Fine by me. Leaving, I mean, not the hats."

They walked back, the sound of the snow crunching beneath blood-spattered boots and the distant twitter of an annoyingly insistent bird in the distance the only sounds that accompanied them back.

Dimly, Seifer wondered when the silence between them had seemed so……..effortless.

Here they were, walking back to Garden, soaked in Marlboro gut salad. It would have been hilarious, if he hadn't been so damned tired.

"Nice day." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, remembering their previous discussion. "Hey Quistis."

She regarded him warily. "What is it, Seifer?" she asked resignedly.

"Is five minutes up yet?"

She looked over at him, cheeks and that impeccable hair coated with a hearty helping of green grime, eyes exhausted and lips mouth pursed in irritation. She opened her mouth to yell at him-

-and laughed.


	12. Packages, Snow, and New Perspectives

Disclaimer: Once again, nothing in Squaresoft is mine. I wouldn't mind if they hired me, though!

_Ecstasy is all you need_

_Livin__' in the big machine_

_Oh, you're so vain_

_Now your world is way too fast_

_Nothing's real and nothing lasts_

_And I'm aware_

_I'm in love, but you don't care_

_Turn your anger into lust_

_I'm still here but you don't trust at all_

_And I'll be waiting_

_I'm not the one who broke you_

_I'm not the one you should fear_

_What do you got to move you darling_

_I thought I lost you somewhere_

_But you were never really ever there at all._

-Goo Goo Dolls, "Big Machine"

Chapter 11

"Instructor! Aren't I your favorite student?" –Seifer

"Not anymore." –Quistis

Seifer squinted through the snow. He could just make out the top of garden cresting the next hill, half-hidden. The slime that coated them both had long ago hardened into a freezing crust, the putrid shell glued to their skins by the icy Trabian winds. His lips were chapped and bleeding, and the coat he was wearing didn't do much insulating when the down was matted in monster entrails. He didn't even bother to lift his feet any longer, but instead, tiredly plowed them through the powdery drifts.

Magic was a very draining weapon, one that took more energy than physical fighting itself, and he had junctioned too rapidly for his own 'magic metabolism' to keep up. As a result, he was now tired and sagging with exhaustion. His nerves shivered, bundled against his bones the way they always did after overexerting himself in casting. It had been awhile. Magic had never been something he'd firmly relied on, but he was beginning to appreciate its finer points.

He glanced over at Quistis, whose lips were fairly turning blue. The front of her jacket was a big, bloody mess, and her hair was stiff with Marlboro slime, like hair gel gone terribly wrong. Tiredly, she trudged through the snow, feet dragging as she gripped her whip at her side, the dark leather rope coiled in her palm. He'd wanted to make some smart-ass comment about her new hair gel, but was quick to realize that he was just as soaked in the shit as she was. Sad, but he didn't feel like picking on her.

_Must be fucking tired_, he thought ruefully, _if I'm too exhausted to rip on Trepe._

"Here we are." She muttered as they reached the top, resting her hands on her knees for a moment. She'd wanted to give him a good SeeD sermon on barreling forth with physical attacks at monsters such as Marlboros as a first strike endeavor, but was currently too tired to conjure up a decent homily. It was a sad, sad day indeed when she couldn't muster up the energy to yell at Seifer Almasy, but there it was. All she wanted now was a hot shower and a clean bed.

And maybe a couple dozen painkillers.

Seifer squinted through the snow once again, feeling relieved. Garden's doors had never looked quite so welcoming.

He shuffled tiredly behind her through the front doors into the vehicle bay, stomping snow-laden shoes on the dry pavement as they made their way inside. Quistis yawned, quickly divesting herself of the soiled jacket as soon as Garden's heated insides welcomed them in. Seifer followed suit, peeling off his soiled jacket and draping it behind him. Stares and whispers accompanied them.

"Any other lessons for the day, _Instructor_?"

Quistis peeled her own jacket off, looking with disgust at the rapidly deteriorating suede fabric, courtesy of the Marlboro's somewhat acidic blood. She decided to ignore the 'Instructor' address.

"No, Seifer," she sighed. "Just get some rest and meet me in the second floor commons tomorrow."

"You should, too. You look like shit."

She tried in vain to shake the snow and grime from her jacket, but glanced up sharply at his statement. "Thank you. You know, Seifer, you look absolutely wonderful yourself."

His scowl turned upward, lips curving into a cocky smile. "I do what I can," he replied smoothly as he turned, attempting to run his fingers through his hair, scowl deepening as they caught in crusted filth.

She chuckled lightly at his retreating form, surprising herself. Twice in one day, Seifer Almasy had made her laugh. It had to be a record, if indeed one kept track of such things.

_Twice, indeed_. She shook her head.

She looked after him, wondering how someone could strut with green grime stuck all over their body. She had once theorized that even if one wrapped Seifer in cellophane, the boy would probably still manage to swagger. It was an improvement from a wounded slouch, anyway, and Quistis brightened at the idea, however slim, that she might have contributed to it. It was a start-

"Quistis!"

She turned to see an exuberant Selphie running towards her, or rather, struggling towards her, grasping Irvine Kinneas's hand and attempting to haul him behind her. Irvine, however, maintained his lethargic strut, forcing Selphie to practically run in place, shoes slipping on the polished marble floors. Selphie reminded Quistis of a poodle on speed, trying desperately to choke itself on the leash of an infinitely patient master.

Quistis just smiled tiredly at the approaching pair. She wasn't quite sure how Selphie and Irvine worked, but was grateful for the mechanism that kept them together all the same. They were, after all, two of her best friends, and seeing them together never failed to bring a smile to her lips. They were solid, simple (if not eccentric); a more than platonic poster child for the possible, peculiar happiness once could reap from another human being, even at a military academy.

If that happiness was not possible for Quistis herself, then she was happy to see those she loved in possession of it.

Eventually frustrated with her lethargic detainer, Selphie relinquished her boyfriend's hand and ran the rest of the way, boots sliding on the polished floor as she nearly passed Quistis by in her abrupt attempt at halting. Selphie grabbed her shoulder for support, but released it just as quickly.

"Eeek!" shrieked Selphie, staring with dismay at her now thoroughly gooey hand. She looked up at Quistis with horrified green eyes. "Quisty! What did you **_do_** to yourself?"

"Well-"

Irvine approached and lifted the brim of his hat to give her a once over, and for once, Quistis could be fairly certain that he wasn't looking beyond her clothes. He shook his head, holding his nose. "Quisty, lookin' beautiful as always. Although, I might inquire, what new scent you wearin'?"

"Eau de Marlboro, I'm afraid." Quistis chuckled at her friends' open look of horror. "Seifer and I ran into one on our exercise in the snowfields."

Irvine frowned. "A Marlboro? In Trabia? Seems a mite cold for it."

"I was as surprised as you are, Irvine," replied Quistis. "My guess is, though, this year the species encountered a boost, and to avoid victual competition, mature zygotes attached to the hulls of ships to relocate in the highly plausible event of a food shortage, dropped off probably just outside Trabia, and followed the food source-"

"Quisty, you're making my head hurt!" exclaimed Selphie, grabbing her friend's sticky arm. "Now, come on, you're coming to lunch with us! It's the least you can do after standing us up last night!"

"I'm sure my presence wasn't _that_ missed," replied Quistis dryly. "Besides, Selphie, I have to shower-"

"You can shower in my room-it's closer anyways. Irvy, go save us a table." Insisted Selphie, casting a look back at her boyfriend as she dragged her only slightly resisting friend towards the dormitory wing. "Come on, Quisty!"

Irvine shrugged and smiled at Quistis, dark eyes filled with laughter. "Have fun," he mouthed, giving her a little bow as he set off for the cafeteria. She cast Irvine a dirty look over her shoulder. Some gentleman- couldn't he recognize a lady in distress?

She recognized that look in Selphie's eyes. Knowing Selphie, she was either hungry _for_ gossip, or had some.

Either way, Quistis wasn't looking forward to being grilled. Or informed.

Selphie's eyes shone with a devilish light as she tossed Quistis a pair of pink fluffy towels. "So, why'd you miss our film party last night?"

Quistis frowned as she headed into Selphie's bathroom. "Didn't Xu come by and tell you?" she asked, wedging her soaked, thawing vest over her head.

"Well, she said something about taking a much needed break," said a voice right behind her. Quistis glared through the buttonholes, mid-pull, to see Selphie grinning up at her.

"Selphie, have you ever heard of the word, 'privacy'?" asked Quistis, annoyed.

"Nope!" replied her friend cheerfully, hopping up onto the counter and settling her hands on her chin. "Anyways, what's the real reason you didn't stop by?"

Quistis sighed, throwing the ruined top onto the floor and staring at the holes the acid had burned in her pants. So much for SeeD's 'indestructible' clothing line. "Because I was tired, Selphie," she replied, unlacing her boots and wedging the soaked black leather shoes from her tired, throbbing feet. "Why else?"

Selphie just giggled. "Well, Rinoa and I thought you might have 'male' company."

Quistis just gaped, pants in a tattered cotton heap around her ankles. "What?"

"Oh come on, Quisty, the 'break' excuse is the oldest in the book! Are you sure you didn't have anyone 'special' over?" She attempted a wink.

Quistis shook her head. "Selphie, I took some aspirin and went to bed."

"Is that what they're calling it now? Aspirin?" giggled her friend.

Quistis just sighed. She was too tired for this. "Selphie, I've been swamped with paperwork courtesy of Squall for the past three months, and the remainder of my time has been spent with Seifer-"

Selphie scrunched up her face, a disgusted purse to her lips. "You're sleeping with **Seifer**?" She cocked her head to the side, as if trying to envision the idea.

Quistis clapped a hand to her forehead. "No!" Selphie's distant look caused Quistis to try to follow her line of thought…….

…with disturbing results. Quistis quickly reeled her brain back in from its disturbing voyage.

Her brunette friend put up her hands. "Well, Quisty, if _you_ see something in him, I guess he can't be ALL bad-"

"I didn't-" Quistis tripped on her tongue. _Sleeping with Seifer? _

"-well, he **did** blow up a big chunk of Trabia, and he **did** try to destroy Balamb, but like Irvy says-" Quistis frowned, trying to interject, but Selphie was already on a roll, her hyper-active brain already spinning tales of engagement parties and wedding showers. "…….don't worry, Quisty, your secret's safe with me!" She declared, hopping down from the counter to embrace her friend, ignoring the fact that the tall blonde in front of her was still slathered in rapidly thawing goo. Selphie pulled away, the front of her dress covered in an emerald-colored paste. The short brunette seemed too excited by the idea to notice, however. Quistis was amazed- one minute she hated Seifer, and then next minute he 'wasn't all bad?'

"But-" Quistis began again, horrified at the thoughts that were no doubt spinning through the avid gossip's mind.

"It's about time, anyways!" Selphie declared. "I thought you were some sort of SeeD nun!"

Quistis just shook her head, wondering exactly when her friend had been dropped on her head.

And wondering, vaguely, if it would hurt to do it just one more time.

She turned back. "'Sides, Rinoa says he's-" Selphie made a crude, but generous gesture with the spacing between her fingers, causing Quistis to blush for unknown reasons.

"Selphie, I really wouldn't-"

Selphie just grinned as the door shut in front of her. "Suuuure, Hurry up! We're gonna be late for lunch!"

Quistis stared at the door for several seconds before shrugging out of the remainder of her clothes, welcoming the warm water of the shower as she did her best to scrub the grime out of her hair with Selphie's shampoo. The monster's blood was apparently as tenacious and annoying as the monster itself.

_Sleeping with Seifer? Not bloody likely._

_…._

_…_

Seifer spit, disgusted, as the rapidly thawing innards trickled their way down to his lips. He wiped at his face with his sleeve, only to make more of a mess of his forehead than originally existed.

Fucking Marlboro.

He thrust his keycard into the door slot, waiting impatiently for the light to turn green. The machine beeped, and was rewarded with a curse and a quick pounding. Reluctantly, under the new rain of abuse, the light flashed green.

Fucking door.

He peeled off his soiled clothes, noticing with no small amount of irritation that Hyperion would have to be cleaned once again. The blade shone with a jade sheen, a sheen that if left alone, would be sure to rust the metal.

Fucking…things.

His clothes dropped to the floor, and he knew without examining them closely that they were for shit. He'd have to go get another set from that damned supply room, and knowing his luck, that harpy would be working there and he'd wind up with a pair of pants shoved up his ass.

He frowned as he thought back to that afternoon. Or mess of an afternoon, at any rate. He'd had plenty of……excursions, so to speak, nights spent with women who had wanted the same thing as he had. One night, plain and simple, no holes barred, no strings attached. Even after the Sorceress war there had been no shortage of women- women that wanted him for what he had done, his sword and shield a kind of trophy they could hold between their legs for a night, a pawn they could conquer, a prize they could pin down and tame.  They could fuck the man who had 'almost-done-great-things'…apparently that was a consolation prize to screwing a hero. They were fools, of course. Women seemed to think that the act itself had meaning, when, in reality, for him, it was simply skin on skin, the most un-introspective activity he could think to participate in.

Maybe that's why he'd enjoyed it so much.

They'd meant nothing, at any rate. They were a moment, a breath, a beat, a whisper that was lost almost as soon as it was uttered. Like scratching an itch, like pinching a match head to extinguish the flame. Simple. Easy. Entirely forgettable.

_So what the hell had lost its appeal?_

The shower's hot water was a welcome spray on his face, one that instantly soothed the kinks in his muscles but did little to ease the knot in his brain.

When the hell was it that he had changed? When exactly was the moment where everything he had once valued came crashing down at his feet, cheap and worn like fake silver, a green tarnish on its shiny exterior? All that had mattered once was power, and in that power glory and honor. And pride, beautiful shimmering pride, a proud conceit that he hadn't bothered to conceal to anyone. And why should he? Nature had been kind; whatever genes the Almasy line had been in possession of had granted him enough wit and enough brains to accomplish whatever fate dangled above his grasp. Or so he thought.

Whatever he had, it wasn't enough.

Not even fucking close, in fact.

And now, here, back waist-deep in the shards of his former dreams, followed by ghosts of memories and even thinner waifs of aspirations, he found that all he had held as gold wasn't even brass-plated.

He was tired. Tired of the façade, tired of the three-ring circus he'd made for himself. Tired of being a spectacle, of being Garden's poster child for failure. Being a revolutionary wasn't nearly as glorious as the world projected. In fact, being a revolutionary had simply meant being a defined pawn for an indifferent cause.

He thought back to earlier, when he had felt Quistis' hand on his skin, the bubble of her heart rising through her palm in an attempt to heal his injuries even as his palm burned into her side, exchanging their hints of soul on healing coolant.

It had been, by far, one of the strangest experiences of his life.

Ultimecia had never healed him. In fact, for every failure, she'd made sure the wounds hurt that much more. Towards the end, his goddess, his Queen, had looked at him the same way everyone else in his life had regarded him: with disgust. Regarded him as a failure.

And yet, that wasn't the way she looked at him.

That had never been the way she looked at him.

He could still remember times in her class, sitting in the back, alternating between questioning her authority and picking on Puberty Boy to pass the time. She'd sent him to detention more times than he could count on his hand (if he had two thousand extra hands and feet), yelled at him about twice that much, tried to beat him with a board eraser, and on several occasions, gave him failing grades. But she never lost that look in her eyes, when, however infrequently, she turned her eyes away from Squall to look at him.

That glimmer of hope, that remained no matter how hard he'd tried to destroy it.

He could still remember her tiny hands pressed in his face, frowning at both he and Squall, forcing herself between the two squabbling boys. He remembered how he had looked on her in surprise as, in the halls of Garden, she'd stood between them once again, eyes cold and lips tightly pursed, telling them to get to class.

And yet, during all the times he could remember, never once had she looked at him that way, the way the others all did with the exception of Matron: like he was doomed to fail. Not until the end, anyway, and then, even then, her face had been simply blank, determined…not filled with hate like the others.

"_You know, not everyone wants you to fail."_

"_Name one person."_

"…………_.I don't, Seifer.."_

"Quistis." He said it aloud, the sound of her name reverberating throughout the tiny shower.

He almost smiled at the mental image of Quistis glaring sourly at the remains of their fallen enemy, chest heaving and hands clenched at her sides even as hunks of tentacle dripped from her cheeks, then breaking into laughter, holding her sides in mirth as he chuckled with her.

Seifer forced his face into the spray, trying to rid himself of the rest of the muck embedded in his hair even as he tried to clear the thoughts from his mind.

He was forced to scrub harder with the soap, swearing inwardly at the Marlboro's uncanny ability to be incredibly irritating even after death.

Still, her image persisted in his mind.

Quite a formidable foe, Quistis. He was coming to find that if forced to deal with her, he liked her much better as an ally.

…

…

"Hey, there's my two favorite girls!" exclaimed Irvine, looking up as both Quistis and Selphie walked in, Selphie cheerfully clinging to her exhausted-looking friend's arm and fairly dragging Quistis behind her.

Quistis waved her hand in a tired-looking wave, the smallest of smiles rising feebly to her lips as she took a seat next to Irvine. Rinoa, already seated next to Squall, gave Quistis an enthusiastic wave.

Quistis had been forced to borrow some of Selphie's clothes, most of which were either too bright or too tight for her liking. Selphie finally pushed her into a pair of old sweats, a set that was decidedly too small for Quistis' taller frame. The top rode too high and the pants followed suit. Although she appreciated her friend's generosity, Quistis was anxious to change. She could feel more than one Trepie stare burning into her exposed middle.

At any rate, it was still better than wearing Marlboro-designed battle wear.

"Hi Quisty! Are you feeling better?" Rinoa's voice was a little too bright, like the shutters pulled abruptly on a sleeping person.

Quistis gave her a weary thumbs up sign as her head slumped down onto her other hand. "Feeling cleaner, at any rate."

"Irvine said you encountered a Marlboro." Said Squall.

_He speaks_, thought Quistis wryly, _and he speaks a sentence without the word 'paperwork' in it. Amazing._

"Yes," she replied curtly. "We did."

Squall's look of discontent clearly indicated his desire for a more descript answer. Quistis sighed.

"I read that Marlboro life cycles are empirically proven to be relatively Malthusian in all but lifespan aspects, meaning they have relatively quick development and reproduction processes. The spore-like zygote has the ability to latch onto other surfaces, where it develops, absorbing any available nutrients. My theory is that this year the population encountered an overshoot, and attached to hulls and airships, where it dropped off and followed-"

"Geez! You sound like a book! I'll get you some lunch, Quisty!" exclaimed Selphie, dragging Rinoa with her. Irvine followed.

"Anyway," replied Quistis tiredly. "They followed the food source. Seifer and I were barely able to take it down. I recommend increasing team members on monster excavation missions, just to be safe."

"Noted." Replied Squall. A pause. "How is Seifer progressing?"

"I'm not sure that I'm qualified to judge that." She replied evenly. "He seems fine to me. Like the old Seifer…without dignity."

Squall just shook his head. "Just don't let your guard down, Quistis."

Anger stirred in her. What was she, a child? "And what, pray tell, do you mean by that?"

Squall sighed. "Just be careful."

Quistis leaned back in her chair, regarding him with a cool expression. Two years ago she would have been thrilled that he was talking to her. Now, however, she was anxious for him to shut up. "Why do _you_ care? Aside from filling positions and filing reports, you've made it abundantly clear-"

"Hey, you guys know if they've got any hot dogs left?" came a friendly interjection, shaking Quistis out of the tension that seemed to have suddenly enveloped the entire table. She tensed, and looked away.

"I have no idea, Zell," replied Squall, reluctantly tearing his eyes from hers in his typical 'this is not over' fashion.

Zell, oblivious to the tension at the table, took a seat and flipped it backwards, sidling down to sit next to Squall. Zell's eyes darted around the cafeteria, making sure no one had a hot dog on their plate. He was convinced that a cafeteria conspiracy was being formed against him, and had been formulating intricate paranoia over the last three years.

Rinoa and Selphie approached the table, Rinoa's worried look revealing to Quistis that the young sorceress could sense the tension that had most recently radiated between herself and her boyfriend. Damn that sorceress-knight bond.

Quistis tried to abandon her anger in favor of a light laugh, attempting to ease the mood or change the subject, the latter of which was more likely to happen with Squall at the table. "You're a food schizoid, Zell."

Zell's blue eyes flickered in their suspicious pursuit as Rinoa and Selphie finally set their trays down on the table. "Ha. We'll see. I have a theory, you see. A hyperthesis of the inner workings of this corrupt cafeteria."

"Zell, it's hypothesis-" began Quistis, but the young man was already on a tirade.

Zell slammed his hand down on the table in sudden adamant declaration. The group calmly picked up their glasses, used to Zell's lunchtime soapbox avowals. "Y'know when you do laundry and you always end up with less socks? Well, it all ties in, you'll see. Whosever eatin' all my hotdogs has gotta be connected!" He rubbed his gloved hands together. "This is gonna be big. My guess is it runs pretty deep."

"Zell, you're gonna become a raving loony if ya keep this up." Proclaimed Selphie, pointing at her obsessed friend as she handed Quistis her customary salad.

"Gonna?" muttered Irvine. Rinoa, Selphie, and Quistis poorly concealed smiles. Squall just rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, laugh it up." Sneered Zell. "Everyone laughed at Waker Brauey, too, and look what happened to him."

Selphie took a bite of her sandwich, looking quizzical. "Whoth's Walker Brewey?"

Rinoa giggled. "Waker Brauey is the man who invented three-sided tape."

"Twee-thided thape?" asked Selphie, even more puzzled than before.

"He initially became famous for his 'artistic' ingenuity and creative 'foresight'." Supplied Quistis, lifting a bite of salad to her lips.

"And later became institutionalized for his insanity," finished Irvine, frowning at the lack of dressing on his burger.

But Zell wasn't listening. Suddenly, he bolted up from the table, overturning his chair as he sprinted towards a hapless cadet. "Hey! You!" he shouted. "That'd better not be a hotdog!" The cadet, terrified, promptly took off through the cafeteria doors, with Zell hot on his heels.

Quistis just chuckled, tucking into her salad. Scouting Trabian hills worked up a decent appetite. Maybe she'd go back up and get some of the lasagna they always served on Tuesdays.

"How are plans coming along for the Winter Festival, Selphie?" asked Quistis, in an attempt to change the topic of conversation to something that wasn't about Marlboros, Seifer Almasy, hot dogs, or, inevitably, her lack of a sex life.

Selphie's eyes lit up. "Great! We're getting some really cool lanterns from a Trabian dealer, actually, which are going to set off the hanging ice crystals and oh! I really need to get that snow machine ready…the last time it started on fire, and we had all that paper mache…I mean, that thing really escalated quickly."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "How could any of us forget? That was the famous 'Inferno' festival, and by the time the sprinkler systems were done, everyone was soaked through-"

Irvine's eyes glazed over. "Soaked completely though. Yeah, that was a great festival-"

Selphie glared at him. "_Anyway_, Nida's assured me he's got it fixed this year, and there's going to be this big ice punch fountain! It's gonna be soooo sweet! Quistis, you'll help me with decorations, right?"

"Sure, Selphie." Said Quistis. It wasn't as if she would have a date this year…or any other plans with which to facilitate an excuse.

"So, Quisty," asked Rinoa, leaning in, dark hair brushing the tabletop. "How was your night last night?" The young sorceress made a terrible face, one eye squinted tightly shut, mouth twisted open in an attempt to bring down the lid.

Quistis just stared blankly at her.

"Did you enjoy your _break_?" persisted Rinoa, once again contorting her face into another horrible botched attempt at a wink. This time, the eyelid wavered, nearly sliding closed. She tilted her head up, trying to maximize the effect.

Squall frowned at her. "Is something wrong with your salad?"

Rinoa frowned. "No, why?"

"Then why the hell are you making that face?" he snapped.

Selphie giggled, then proceeded to choke on her sandwich. Irvine rolled his eyes and clapped her heartily on the back.

Quistis just shook her head, begging Hyne for the patience not to strangle all her friends. "My night was fine, Rinoa. I caught up on missed sleep."

Rinoa cast her half of a knowing smile. "Of course. You must have been _very_ tired." This time in her wink attempt, her jaw tilted to one side, giving Rinoa the look of a very drunk individual that had just been severely clobbered about the head.

Irvine sighed, getting to his feet. "It might be just me, but I do believe y'all get weirder every day," he muttered, dumping his tray and walking out of the cafeteria.

Selphie checked her watch. "Oh shoot! My class starts in less than half an hour!" She took off, a yellow blur against the predominantly uniform-laden cafeteria. Rinoa was still smiling as she carried off her own tray to clean it.

Squall stood. "Where is Seifer?" She didn't miss the accusing tint in his voice.

Quistis shrugged. "I believe he's in the shower. Why? Should I be bathing him myself?" She was already frustrated and tired from the day's events, and being in Squall's presence did little to quell that frustration.

Squall eyes narrowed, gray pools darkening with frustration.

"Seifer isn't someone you can turn your back on, Quistis." _Especially_ you, he thought to himself.

Quistis gritted her teeth. "When have I turned my back on him?"

"Remember the detention incident? The one where he sabotaged an entire mission and wound up snagged in Edea's web?"

Quistis stood, seething. "Are you suggesting that's _my_ fault!"

"I didn't suggest it. I said it."

She recoiled as if he'd struck her. She could have sworn she saw a flash of regret in his eyes, but whatever it was, it was gone as quickly as it came.

She leaned over the table, incensed. "Well, if I'm such a bad babysitter, why assign me to the same charge?" she whispered furiously.

"It wasn't _my_ idea in the first place."

This had to be a record for words spoken to her in one day. Not that they were **good** words.

Quistis threw out her arms. "Then why the sudden concern over my assignment status? Why not assign it to someone else?"

"Just because it wasn't my idea doesn't mean I don't hope it works. I never said-"

"You didn't _have_ to say it." Snapped Quistis. "Criticize my professionalism all you want, Squall. But don't pretend it's out of concern. I've been a lot of things for you- punching bag, secretary, and now, of course, babysitter, but I've never been your friend. You've made that quite clear in the past. So let's stop pretending, shall we?"

She looked up to see Rinoa approaching. So did Squall, apparently. "This discussion is over." He said coldly.

"Over?" she smiled, anger still glittering quite apparently in her eyes. "It's like our friendship. It never started."

She snatched her tray with a rough scrape, stalking back into the line and leaving the Commander behind her.

"Quisty!"

Quistis sighed as Rinoa's voice reached her ears. She was in no mood to be counseled on Squall's merits at the moment. She turned. "Rinoa, if this is about Squall-"

"What about him?" asked Rinoa sweetly, leaning over the counter as Quistis snatched a plate and proceeded to fill it with lasagna.

"Or Seifer-"

Rinoa smirked. "Oh Quisty, I don't reeeeaally think you're sleeping with Seifer!"

"You don't?" _Why _**couldn't** _I be sleeping with Seifer?_, she thought to herself, nearly shaking her head at the ridiculousness of that statement as soon as the thought flitted across her mind.

Her dark-haired friend scrunched her nose, adding an orange to her tray. "It's just fun to indulge Selphie's wild imagination sometimes."

Quistis wanted to roll her eyes, but refrained. Selphie's imagination didn't need encouraging. It was already out of control.

She moved the tray down the line, noticing the raven-haired shadow behind her. She wished Rinoa would leave. She was still stinging from her argument with Squall, and didn't need the angel around as a reminder of how socially unappealing she herself was.

Quistis frowned. "Aren't you upset about him being back, Rinoa?"

The sorceress frowned. "Seifer? I suppose I could be, but Seifer and I had a history together before the Sorceress War. He was very different then." She moved to allow another student access to the salad bar, thoughtfully chewing on a carrot stick. "The war changed him, just like it changed Edea. He's different now. I think we _all_ are, don't you? I know **_I_** am." She looked at Quistis seriously for a moment, before she broke out into one of her beaming smiles. "I think it's nice what you're doing, Quisty."

Quistis just shook her head. "I don't even know _what_ I'm doing, Rinoa." She said quietly, surprised at her admission to the girl next to her.

Rinoa patted her shoulder. "It'll work out, you'll see." She said cheerfully, waving as she walked away. Quistis just shook her head. Rinoa's misguided sense of social justice never ceased to amaze her.

"And Quistis?"

"What, Rinoa?" she asked tiredly.

The young woman beamed. "Don't worry, he'll come around."

Quistis spent the rest of her lunch trying to figure out exactly who Rinoa meant.

…

…

…

If Seifer weren't so damned tired, he'd have the energy to be bored out of his skull. As it was, however, he was content to lay on his back, staring that the shadows the played on his wall: the dark, delicate waifs of snowflakes shadowing the plaster as they fell. His muscles were relaxing, slowly, the cramps of magic eventually fading, leaving a faint acidic sting behind. The ache in his side had subsided completely, thanks to Quistis' Curaga. The shower had left him feeling refreshed and relaxed, and so he'd stretched out on the small white cot, forgoing lunch in favor of a fleeting daydream or two.

The cold from the window cracks leaked in, reminding him of the orphanage windows in the dead of winter. He remembered, dimly, the way they'd all crowded around it, watching the first snowfall of the year in child-like anticipation. Even he'd looked forward to the snow, even if it was for the sole reason of pelting Chicken Wuss with snowballs or wrecking Quistis' carefully crafted snow structures. Even now, he had no idea why he enjoyed getting a rise out of people.

Perhaps it was because he always found their anger easier to deal with than their affection, or some psycho-babble crap like that.

A knock rattled him out of his thoughts. It was probably Rajin and Fujin, back from their mission.

Instead, it turned out to be Quistis, arms wrapped around a gigantic box. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" came the muffled voice. The room was pitch dark- he could understand her question.

_Just me going crazy_, he thought to himself. _Nothing new._

"What the hell is that?" he asked, stepping back.

"Well if you don't let me in soon, I'm going to drop it all over the hallway, and then we'll all find out." She muttered.

He took another step back. Before he could flick on the lights, she dumped the box into his arms, and he nearly dropped it in surprise. It really was heavy.

"What the fuck?" he muttered, setting it down on his bed. He stepped back to look at it. It was taped in a completely haphazard fashion- clearly over half a roll of duct tape had been used to insure that the thing stayed shut. On the top, someone had written 'Seifer Almasy' in clear script. She handed him a box cutter.

"What's in here?" he asked, suspicion currently the better part of his curiosity.

"Open it and find out," she replied, folding her arms.

"I repeat, what's in here?" It was a 'care package' from Galbadia, for all he knew. He could just see Martine, chuckling to himself as he hand-wrapped a cyanide bath set. Although he doubted Martine wrote like a girl.

Quistis, meanwhile, was giving him a proper scowl. "It's a bomb," she replied caustically. "Which is why I'm sticking around to see you open it."

"Fuck, all right. Hyne, don't they have pills for PMS?" Seifer took the box cutter from her, more out of a vague apprehension that she was going to use it than an eagerness to see what was actually inside the box. He cut along the sides uneasily, hacking through the sloppily taped cube, finally wedging his fingers in to pop open the top.

He looked down, and frowned. It wasn't a bomb……….a cyanide bathset………..or even a boiled rabbit. It wasn't remotely what he was expecting.

"My stuff." He muttered, amazed to see it uncharred……...and in recognizable pieces, to boot. Whole ones.

"Don't worry," said Quistis quickly. "Nobody went through it. Well, except for me, two years ago." She knew, despite his brash and coercive outer coating, at his core, Seifer was an intensely private person. She had taken great care, years ago, to respect that. Of course, at the time, she'd thought she was sifting through a dead man's things.

He was sure Balamb had scattered it in the streets by now, or hosted an Almasy Bonfire for his desertion. And yet, here it was; papers, clippings, an old sweater from Edea, a pair of boots, birth certificate, a roll of booth film from his summer spent in Timber with Rinoa. He dug, finding his savings rolled in a rubber band, his cadet ID……..it was all there.

"But-?"

Quistis smiled. "I kept it for you, in the off-chance you'd be coming back for it. It sat in storage all this time." She paused, easing down on the mattress on the other side of the box. "They almost threw it out after the war, but Edea insisted that I keep it. I thought you might like it, now."

Seifer frowned. "You……...did that?"

Quistis shrugged. "They filled your room almost right away when they thought you were…..." She cleared her throat. "They were going to throw it all away, but……" She brought her head up to look at him, a small smile on her face. "I suppose I had the crazy idea you'd be back for it."

"No crazier an idea than me actually coming back, I guess." he replied, staring across the room, jade eyes glossed with shadows and some nameless emotion she'd never been able to place. It had always been there, beneath his arrogance, pride, and pomposity, but never had it lain so bare before.

Quistis jumped slightly at the feel of his hand brushing hers. "Quistis." He said, eyes meeting hers for one brief, thoroughly disconcerting moment. He cleared his throat. "Uh, thanks." It was a muttered word, barely audible as he jerked his head away, withdrawing his hand just as quickly. A crackle of warmth darted through her hand at his touch, a fire gone before it could catch.

"Well, I'll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing." She stood and rubbed her arms, gazing out the small, hazy box of window that each SeeD room was equipped with, watching the snow filter down. "So pretty….I forget how cold it is." She murmured absently.

"Yeah," he muttered, eyes fastened to the dark silhouette that stood in front of the windowpane.


	13. Names and Body Bags

Author's Note: New chapter here, a plotbunny that just wouldn't go away no matter how many times I whacked it in the head. It could be that I've watched too many episodes of Forensic Files, but I just had to write a morgue scene. Plus, I think this chapter lends a little more plot credibility to the whole storyline. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Disclaimer: Squaresoft isn't mine, and I don't get paid to screw around with these characters…although it isn't for lack of hoping that Squaresoft will hire me!

Chapter 13- Names and Body Bags

The sun was warm on her belly, her drink cold in her hand, and she had on a pair of expensive sunglasses that made her look very important. The beach was peaceful, the sand warm and white, and the ocean glittered invitingly in the distance.

There was a very handsome, shirtless man walking towards her with a fresh drink and a bottle of oil…

**Ring, ring.**

"You can start on my back, Raul," she heard herself saying, ignoring the buzzing in her ear.

"Of course, Miss Trepe." Said the handsome man obediently, bowing his blonde head. "I can go as long as you like."

_Mmmmm__…of course you can, _she thought, smiling.

**Ring, ring**.

Sunny beaches were not supposed to be ringing.

Quistis grumbled into her pillow, craning her head to crack an eye open to find no beach, no sun, and no Raul. In the semi-darkness of her room, she could see the red flash of her com-link. Grunting, she picked it up.

"Yes?"

"You have been required to accompany Dr. Kadowaki to the Trabian public morgue. Her consultation has been requested, and transport is required. Your assignment will be to assist SeeD Glyphias as squad commander and act as mission recorder. Uniform required. Weapons clearance, none. Meet in the garage in one hour. Oh, and anticipating your request, Instructor Glyphias has granted you permission to bring Almasy. See you later, Quistis!"

Click.

It was the library girl Arya's voice. Was there anywhere that girl _didn't_ work?

Mumbling. Quistis swung her legs over the bed, orienting herself and picking up the phone once more, wishing very much that she was still on the sunny beach with Raul's strong hands.

…

….

…….

A loud, shrill sound jolted him from the blank slate of sleep into the world of the sparse, loose-spring-infested mattress, the taste of morning breath in his mouth and his brain a muddled mess from the lack of sleep he'd been running on in days previous.

Was there an anti-sleep conspiracy he wasn't aware of? Hyne.

Seifer rolled over and slapped at his alarm clock, only to realize that it was a ringing phone. Fumbling, he pulled the receiver over to his ear, causing the rest of the phone base to crash to the floor.

"Shit!" he hissed, shaking the base to dislodge the rest of the cord. When that failed, he simply craned his head down into the phone piece.

"Hello?"

He could hear feminine laughter on the end of the phone, a distinctly familiar sound that jogged his senses a little. "Hello, Seifer."

"Trepe?" he blinked. "What the hell do you want?"

"Good morning to you too, Almasy." She said wryly. "I thought you'd like to get some breakfast before we leave."

"Leave?" he echoed, trying to jumpstart his brain into functioning. What the hell was she calling him at half past dawn for?

"For our date, remember?" She was laughing.

"Date?" He frowned, panic coiling in his stomach. He didn't remember making a date with Trepe. Had he been drunk? "What-?"

A sigh on the other end of the receiver. "I'm kidding, Seifer. We've been requested to accompany Dr. Kadowaki to the public morgue in Trabia. We leave in one hour, exactly."

"…huh?"

If he could sense emotions through the phone line, he'd wager to guess that Trepe was gearing up to strangle him. "Do you want to get breakfast before we leave, or not?"

"Ugh…no."

Another sigh. "No, you don't want to go? Or no, you'd like to get some breakfast?"

"Uhm." he rubbed his eyes, his voice still low and crackly with sleep. "Breakfast. Fine. Great."

"I'll expect you down in the cafeteria then in an hour then. It's been really wonderful talking to you, Seifer. Maybe by breakfast you'll have graduated from barely coherent monosyllables and into short sentences. Oh, and Seifer? Dress in your uniform."

Click.

Muttering to himself, Seifer stumbled off to the shower, only to find with a thud that the telephone cord had wound itself around his ankle.

If a tax were ever imposed on swearing, Seifer Almasy would be paying out the ass…literally.

By the time Seifer had squeezed himself into his dress uniform (Quistis had underestimated his size by a slim margin), they had only time to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel as they breezed through the cafeteria and walked down to the garage. Quistis was also dressed in uniform, and Seifer found himself wondering, not for the first time, what utilitarian function the girls' very short skirts served. High-kicking attacks? Riiiight.

_Cid…you pervert_, he thought, chuckling.

The garage lights were already on and humming, and three people were already standing next to a grey van commonly used for soldier transport. There was a man Seifer did not recognize, Dr. Kadowaki, and none other than Zell Dincht, who was already pacing a circle around the car, shadow boxing.

"Who's that?" he muttered, gesturing at the man standing next to Dr. Kadowaki. He was at least as tall as Seifer himself and had long, silver hair which was tied back in a simple ponytail. He looked rather annoyed at Zell's pacing, but remained silent and stoic.

"You don't remember him? That's Serabin Glyphius." Said Quistis. "He's the Head Instructor here, and while Cid and Squall are gone, acts in their stead for minor matters and contracts."

Seifer shoved the rest of the bagel in his mouth. "Wooks lak a peedy boya be."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to even pretend to understand what you just said."

Dr. Kadowaki smiled at them as they approached. "I appreciate you young people accompanying me," she said. "I'm not much of a driver anymore, especially in this terrain."

"Not a problem, Kadowaki. Shall we?" asked Serabin, and they proceeded to pile in. Zell was driving, and Kadowaki was sitting up next to him in the front. Serabin and Quistis were sitting in the middle, and Seifer found himself sitting alone in the back and feeling very much like a little kid on a warped family road trip. There was a glass divider between Zell and Dr. Kadowaki and the rest of the van, so he couldn't really make out what they were saying.

Serabin immediately began a conversation with Quistis, his silver hair tucked over his shoulder and an amiable smile on his face. Seifer really didn't remember him, but the man looked more like a candidate for a charm school than a military academy.

Bored, Seifer put his arm up along the backseat and watch the Balamb scenery fly by, which consisted mostly of snow and the occasional large rock.

Five minutes into the drive, they hit something. The collision caused the car to rock, sending everyone sprawling and sending's Seifer's skull into the already low ceiling. Swearing, he rubbed at the back of his head. "The hell was that?"

There was another loud 'THWAP!' from outside the car, which rocked it from side to side, sending everyone sprawling once more.

Serabin leaned over to peer out the window, but quickly jumped back when a large, flipper-sized appendage slapped into the side, denting the metal and nearly rolling the vehicle over.

"The hell?" muttered Zell, trying to shift gears.

"Zell, run Scan." Said Quistis, leaning forward and tapping the window barrier in the front.

The young man spread his hands against the windshield, a tissue-like sheet of magical fog fanning out from his fingertips. "Ah, shit. Snowlions, about ten of 'em. Must be a breeding ground. It's the season for it, right?" he said, slowly. "They're pretty high level. You need an exact HP estimation, Quis?"

Seifer had always found the term HP somewhat stupid, like some monster level on a video game, but it was still the best term for describing relative enemy strength. He could just see Trepe now, in the front of her class, explaining the system while wearing her fuck-me librarian glasses and sporting a four foot stick up her ass:

_"HP and MP are part of an approximate system used to classify and quantify relative strengths and weaknesses concerning magical and physical strengths. One HP, which is understood as a tactile unit based on an average application of force by a weapon or spell, is the requisite amount of force that must be used before an enemy will become temporarily or permanently incapacitated. Again, most of these are relative units- your Scan casts will give you an estimation, which SeeD procedure requires you to be able to translate into rough HP's. Depending on the strength of the SeeD or the ability of the monster, HP's may increase or decrease- thus their definition as a relative unit. MP's are less specific, as they measure a unit of both force and energy and are dependant on a physical conduit- namely, the rough physical composition of the being attacking or defending."_

Seifer wondered offhandedly what his own battle stats were now…

_Probably 2 HP with a weakness against bourbon,_ he thought bitterly.

"An HP estimation will not necessary," replied Serabin, grabbing the door hatch. "Back up the car. Quistis and I can take care of this."

"I _could_ just run 'em over-"

"**Just back up**." snapped Serabin. "We cannot afford a flat tire out here."

Zell threw the van into reverse, and Serabin opened the door, slipping outside.

"Stay here," ordered Quistis, as Seifer moved to get out.

"Why?" asked Seifer.

She fixed him with a look that told him to stay put, and slammed the van door shut behind her.

It was then that he remembered he was un-junctioned, sans-weapon, and, all things considered, fairly useless.

Seifer grumbled under his breath, and was left to watch the unfolding battle scene through the rapidly fogging windows.

Quistis and Serabin, both garbed in standard SeeD issue winter gear, were two dark figures against the falling snow as they trudged around the side of the car. Each jacket, lined with (ironically) Wendigo fur, contained a deep pocket for weapons and any healing potions, and carried two complimentary hand warmers. Seifer had already used his in the car.

Quistis peeled her gloves off her hands, rubbing them together.

Serabin flicked his wrist, and the snowfield let out a hiss of steam as a wave of Fira spread across its surface. Seifer recognized the procedure- it was a standard move to agitate monsters below the surface. Serabin then reached into his jacket, pulling out an impressive pair of silver hand guns.

With an explosive puff of snow, the first of the snow lions reared its ugly head. This one was the one Zell had hit- it had a tire strip over its forehead and looked none too happy to be distracted from the snowy orgy it had been enjoying moments before. Following the first, ten other massive heads reared from the snow drifts, emitting angry roars that were somewhat muffled by the thickly falling flakes.

Serabin unloaded a flash of what Seifer recognized as pulse ammo into the face of the first Snow Lion, spattering chunks of bloody flesh and bone into the snow. He lost no time in directing the fire towards the others as they advanced, lumbering, baring their impressive teeth. Quistis hung back, still rubbing her hands together.

_What the hell was she doing, besides nothing?_

Suddenly, a current of snow rose up behind Quistis and as she turned, a large, talon encrusted appendage that was undoubtedly a Snow Lion tail came down hard on top of her. She disappeared into a white hill with what Seifer imagined was a loud grunt. It was impossible to hear above the van's loud radiator, the snarl of the Snow Lion herd, and the howl of the snow storm. Quistis scrambled to her feet in a matter of seconds, shooting Zell a dirty look.

"Whoops, guess there were eleven," muttered Zell. "Sorry Quisty."

Serabin glanced her way, then advanced on the main herd, which seemed to welcome him in. Snow Lions were not known for being particularly intelligent, but they were incredibly tough to kill, having dense bone structure and thick skins to withstand the Trabian winters.

Serabin unloaded another couple of clips into the herd, but he seemed to be wearing them down more than actually killing them. Seifer was rapidly getting bored. Their 'team leader' was taking pot shots at mac-truck sized monsters, and Trepe was standing in the snow, warming her hands-

Although now Trepe was beginning to glow, a blue aura that he remembered as being an eminent sign of her limit break.

Zell backed up the van another ten feet, whistling. "Here we go," he muttered.

Quistis shouted something to Serabin and cast out her hands, and the snow field exploded, sending the snow beasts flying upwards, their massive bodies suspended like marionettes. He watched as the monsters were encapsulated in black spheres,  the dark orbs rapidly expanding to encapsulate each massive snow lion. Seifer recognized the crackle and the low, steady hum of the magic- it was a grav-based spell. The ground rumbled, the sky blackening as the monsters were blown skyward, then crashed back into the ground with enough force to leave an impression.

The van shook.

 "Oh my," Kadowaki muttered, her hand fluttering to her chest.

Seifer peered out at the snowfield, which now represented a charred and blackened wasteland with 11 neatly stacked Wendigo pancakes. A few rib bones jutted up from the corpses, looking out of place on the now thoroughly flat landscape.

Serabin said something to Quistis, and they set off towards the van. Quistis put on her gloves, a prim expression on her face as she stepped over one of the monster's corpses, apparently now wanting to get her new boots dirty.

The two climbed into the van, and Zell set off again as if nothing had happened. The van was a little worse for wear, but it was still drivable.

"Do you require any healing?" asked Serabin, studying Quistis' expression.

"No, thank you," replied Quistis, her cheeks pink from the cold. "The tail mostly missed me."

"Shockwave pulsar, am I correct?" asked Serabin, slipping his guns into his pockets.

Quistis nodded, adjusting the fingers on one of her gloves.

"Impressive." Said the Head Instructor, adjusting the lapels of his coat. "I've heard of your Blue Magic, but it's quite something to see it in person."

Quistis' cheeks reddened even more. "Thank you."

Seifer scowled. This trip was already boring, and if he had to watch this guy walk around with his lips plastered to Trepe's ass all day, it was really going to become intolerable. "So, why the multitude of people just to escort one person?" he asked, trying to pass the time.

It was Serabin that answered him. "Even the smallest of mission usually requires at least two SeeDs. One to lead, one to verify. In this case, we needed a driver, but Zell hasn't attained the SeeD level necessary to act as a mission leader. However, he's one of the few that has a Type C driving license. This mission will count for SeeD hours towards the next SeeD level, so I thought Miss Trepe, Zell, and yourself would enjoy the opportunity."

_Actually, I would've rather slept in,_ thought Seifer. "So you need one person to drive, one person to watch, and one person to watch the watcher."

"To put it simply, yes."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Real efficient machine, SeeD."

Quistis was giving him a look he recognized from the classroom- the 'don't make trouble' look.

The one he had ignored religiously for years.

"Alas, simplicity and good procedure are often mutually exclusive, Mr. Almasy."

"So I've noticed."

Serabin raised an eyebrow. "Really." It was not phrased as a question, but rather a kind of surprised muse that he would notice anything at all. His irritation went up a notch.

Seifer ignored Quistis' warning look. "Since I've come back here, the SeeD manual has doubled in size. SeeD was supposed to be a more powerful sect, weren't they? It seems…counterproductive to weigh that down with excessive bureaucracy. The second you do that, you've invented a walking political faction, not a soldier. "

Glyphias was smiling at him, probably surprised that he knew words that were more than two syllables. "You don't see the necessity of politics in manners of war?"

"No. I don't see the necessity of politics in _soldiers_."

"Interesting."

"Why is that 'interesting'?" snapped Seifer.

"Because I'm afraid I don't see the distinction."

"You don't see the difference between a soldier and a war?" asked Seifer, a sneer forming in his expression.

But the Head Instructor never answered him. Instead, Quistis interrupted, loudly, with a question of her own. "Do you know why they've asked for Dr. Kadowaki's opinion in his particular case, Serabin?"

The young man turned in his seat. "They say that it related to an advanced case of mag-poisoning, apparently, and Kadowaki's a lead researcher in that field. They say the body washed ashore three days ago, and the medical examiner hasn't been able to figure it out. So, since Dr. Kadowaki was in town, the coroner phoned Garden. Apparently they're old friends."

"Hm. It must have bigger implications than just one body, if they've called for an outside consult," mused Quistis.

Serabin shrugged in response. "Mag poisoning is a virtual unknown in most medical institutions. Kadowaki's own military research has been ground-breaking. She's considered an expert in the field…I can't say that I'm surprised that they've called her. It could be just a routine consult- it's too early to say."

Zell reached back to knock on the window. They'd arrived at their destination- a drab, square building of grey brick along a frozen shoreline. Quistis gave Seifer a dirty look as they piled out of the car. He rolled his eyes, and then grimaced at the sting of cold that instantly tore through his uniform.

What, did he have to get a permission slip to open his _mouth_ now?

Kadowaki was talking with both Zell and Serabin as they walked through the doors, and Seifer and Quistis fell in behind them. "Serabin was nice enough to allow you clearance, so try to be nice yourself." She whispered.

"I _was_ being nice."

Quistis rolled her eyes and walked ahead, tuning in to what Dr. Kadowaki was saying.

"Haven't seen Dr. Sitrom in years," she was saying, her voice echoing off the walls. "Colleague of mine from school, nice fellow, a little eccentric-"

Seifer looked around him. The walls of the morgue were a dark grey that made him feel as if he was trapped in a concrete coffin himself. The faint scent of formaldehyde hung in the air, a heavy antiseptic smell, and the faint, sweet scent of something indescribable that unsettled him…

_Death, lingering in the air above their heads._

A few metal rolling slabs were out in the hallway, draped in white sheets. The outlines of bodies could be seen beneath, and a few of the slabs had toes poking out, tags hanging from them like merchandise.

Zell was looking pale, deliberately avoiding looking at the tables.

"Scared, Chicken Wuss?" he taunted, unable to resist.

The young man's facial tattoo wrinkled as he frowned. "Fuck off, Almasy."

Quistis turned around, looking murderous. "Shut **up**, you two," she hissed.

"He started it," muttered Zell.

They followed Kadowaki down the corridor, finally turning left at the end of the long hallway. Zell shot him a venomous look- Seifer responded by blowing him a kiss, which only infuriated the young man further. At least Chicken Wuss could always be counted on for entertainment.

The room was dimly lit by a few hanging florescent bulbs, their light cast upon long lines of metal lockers. Two slabs contained bodies, both draped with the same white cloth as those in the hallways. A myriad of metal instruments was laid out on a metal tray near one of the bodies: scalpels, skull keys, bone saws, and bloody gauze. Jars were lined up along the walls- most of them filled with various organs suspended in thick yellow liquid. The room was filled with sharp smells- formaldehyde, alcohol, and oddly, the scent of bologna.

If possible, Zell had gotten paler. Seifer chuckled to himself, and Quistis shot him another dirty look. Rearranging his features, he tried to look solemn. That was probably the expression people were supposed to wear in morgues.

"Ah, there you are, Kadowaki! So glad you could make it." A portly little man was making his way towards them, wiping a pair of thick spectacles with a handkerchief. He had thick, graying hair that was sticking up at odd angles, and a fantastic handle bar mustache. He wore a white smock and a black plastic apron, both of which were splattered with blood and bits of bone. Despite his somewhat disheveled appearance, the man had kind eyes, and was smiling at them very amicably. "And these must be all SeeD, am I correct? Well, come in! Come in! The more the merrier! Good-looking bunch, I must say!" His eyes flickered especially over Quistis.

"They are." Replied Kadowaki. "The body, Rogir?"

"Yes, of course," replied Dr. Sitrom, looking a great deal more sober. "It's over here." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a large jar of salve. "Here…may want to put this under your nose." Dr. Kadowaki took the jar and, dipping her finger into it, smeared the clear jelly inside under her nose. She passed it down to Serabin, who did the same and passed it down as well. When the jar reached Seifer, he wiped a bit under his nose as well, jerking at the strong, stinging scent that invaded his nostrils. Still, he supposed, it was probably better than what was to come.

Dr. Sitrom ambled over to one of the slabs, and with no preamble whatsoever, removed the cloth, setting it on another table. The motion was sudden, hard…like ripping a band-aid off before the counting was up.

It was just as well…no amount of preparation would have braced them for what they saw anyway.

The child beneath the cloth could have been no more than seven years of age. His damp hair was the color of dark barley, features fine, gentle. He must have been a beautiful child, living. Now, however, his skin was ashen, his body covered in bruises and his lips a pale blue, slightly parted. There were stitches all over his body, marks from the coroner's incisions.

Dr. Kadowaki was frowning, approaching the table. Both Quistis' and Serabin's faces were unreadable. Zell looked as if he were about to lose his breakfast at any moment, but Seifer no longer felt like laughing at him. Something cold and hard had settled in his stomach, something unnamable that quieted all other thoughts in his mind.

"We found him on the shore near the village of Arsenthe. Excellently preserved in the cold water…estimated that he had been dead around 3 days." Walking over to a large metal sink, the coroner unscrewed a jar and held up a rubbery, dripping grey organ. "The kidney itself had extensive damage…radiation counts were highest here."

Seifer heard a door shut, the echo tremoring through the quiet morgue. Startled, he looked to the left, but Zell had already (quietly) excused himself from the room.

Dr. Kadowaki was pulling on a pair of gloves as Sitrom replaced the kidney in the jar. "Have you yet established plausible cause of death?" She leaned forward, lifting up the lids and shining a light into the boy's unblinking eyes, which were a pale, listless blue. There was a thin line around the boy's skull- lines from the cranial saw.

"Extensive pulmonary damage. The boy's dermal tissue showed an extremely high concentration of radiation, typical of that exuded from a high yield Draw Point. I am thinking that perhaps he fell into one near the ocean. They're quite common in the mountains, and the children often like the colors…quite a few burns from time to time, you know."

Kadowaki examined the child's arm, pressing her thumb along the veins in the wrist. "No external burns here. Let me see the sheets." It was an interesting thing to watch Kadowaki work- all business and no preamble. She flipped through the reports, frowning. "The blood, then-"

"Also very high in radiation," replied the doctor, wiping his hand on his smock and pulling a bologna sandwich from his pocket.

Well, that explained **one** smell…

The old man took a bite of his sandwich, snagging a bit of mayonnaise in his mustache. "As my report says, sudden and rapid exposure…"

"Would not account for these levels in the tissue," finished Kadowaki, handing the clipboard back to him. "The levels here exceed even those of soldiers that have been casting for years. These issue results indicate high exposure over a long period of time. If the boy were suddenly immersed in raw energy from a draw point, he would have severe epidermal damage, high _external_ concentrations. The damage to the pancreas, high radiation found in fatty deposits…all of this suggests prolonged exposure. "

"Perhaps…" mused Dr. Sitrom. "If the body were submerged in the draw point for an extended period of time?"

Dr. Kadowaki shook her head. "No. This damage suggests living, breathing exposure both internally and externally…not post-mortem. The kind of damage here suggests 1-3 months of direct contact."

Dr. Sitrom stroked his mustache a moment. "A student from one of the Gardens, perhaps?"

Dr. Kadowaki shook her head. "Not possible. No Garden would train one this young."

"Not publicly, anyway," muttered Quistis.

"Are there any clues as to the child's identity?" asked Serabin quietly.

"No one reported a child missing in this area that matches his description," Rogir replied, taking another bite of his sandwich, his fingers still wet from the formaldehyde the kidney had rested in. Seifer's stomach squirmed uncomfortably at the sight.

Doctor Kadowaki lifted the sheet from the boy's feet, looking at his toes, his legs. The boy's arms slumped from the table, dangling with the movement. Seifer looked away. He had seen bodies before, but none of them children. There was something about the kid's wide, unblinking eyes, the small hands…it made him uneasy. Kids weren't supposed to die. They were supposed to go fishing and play in the dirt and watch too much TV…they weren't supposed to be lying in a morgue.

He stared at the body, the pale, soft skin…the eyes, a bright blue…for an instant, he could see himself lying there, pickled and cold, and it made every muscle in his body shrink against his bones.

Kadowaki squinted, adjusting her angle. "There are indications…hemorrhaging of the nasal cavity…if blood and any urine samples available were to be run for mag-coagulation in the body, this would prove prolonged exposure and I could more accurately predict a length of time."

"You can measure magic, Dr. Kadowaki?"

"No, but I can manage the damage it can do," replied the older woman grimly.

The coroner, having finished the rest of his bologna sandwich, shook his head. "Ah, but the Trabian government is not prepared to run such tests, I am afraid. The boy is an orphan, and with no family, there will be no pressure to finalize the death certificate. Trabia only wishes to know if this is a pandemic or a community risk that would necessitate more…excessive measures. Your consult was free, and that is why it was allowed."

Dr. Kadowaki looked disgusted. "The Trabian government need not concern itself with a pandemic….however, there are unnatural elements to this boy's death, Rogir, that should be investigated."

"I understand…however, you understand also that financially my hands are tied, yes?"

"Yes, I understand," replied Kadowaki. "Would you mind if I took a tissue sample, for my own analysis? Garden's funding is less…restrictive than yours."

"Not at all," replied Dr. Sitrom. "The boy will be cremated today. Take what you need. I would appreciate it, also, if you would send me the results concerning such a test. This case has been puzzling for all of us, you see."

"Yes, of course," replied Kadowaki, before turning to the SeeDs. "You may wait outside…this will only take a few moments."

Serabin nodded, and they all followed out silently. Quistis turned. "What was the boy's name?" she asked quietly. "What did the lab call him?"

Seifer frowned. What kind of a question was that? The kid was lying like a meat popsicle on a metal slab, his organs in jars and his head sawed open, and she wanted to know his name?

Dr. Sitrom looked up, adjusting his glasses. "Eh? Oh, let me see." Holding up the clipboard, he flipped a page. "No name listed, even after we ran his prints through the system. We call him JB-137…Johnny Blue…blue for his eyes, you see."

"Thank you," she replied, turning to file out after Serabin.

Zell was waiting for them in the lobby, looking nervously at the other bodies in the hallway.

Seifer turned to her. "Why the hell does the kid's name matter?" he asked, once the door had closed behind them.

"Why shouldn't it?" she replied coolly, turning to stand next to Zell. Seifer frowned after her, unsure of what to make of her words.

The ride back to Balamb Garden was somber. Dr. Kadowaki sat with a paper bag on her lap, which contained a urine sample, a blood vial, kidney slice, and plenty of other things none of them wanted to know about. Kadowaki suggested stopping to eat, and seemed baffled when no one else seemed particularly hungry. They all lost their appetites completely when she brought her death bag in with her so its contents wouldn't freeze in the car. There was something about eating a sandwich with a pickled kidney on the table that even Zell couldn't stomach.

After picking at their food, they piled back into the van. Dr. Kadowaki and Serabin spoke quietly about draw point immersion theories. Seifer could see Zell in the rearview mirror, his expression troubled and his face still white as a sheet. Quistis stared resolutely out the window, her expression unreadable.

_What was his name?_

Honestly…he could live a thousand years and never figure that woman out.


	14. The Winter Festival

Chapter 14: The Winter Festival

_Drink up baby, stay up all night  
With the things you could do  
You won't but you might  
The potential you'll be that you'll never see  
The promises you'll only make  
Drink up with me now  
And forget all about the pressure of days  
Do what I say and I'll make you okay  
And drive them away  
The images stuck in your head_

The people you've been before  
That you don't want around anymore  
That push and shove and won't bend to your will  
I'll keep them still

Drink up baby, look at the stars  
I'll kiss you again between the bars  
Where I'm seeing you there with your hands in the air  
Waiting to finally be caught  
Drink up one more time and I'll make you mine  
Keep you apart, deep in my heart  
Separate from the rest, cause I like you the best  
And keep the things you forgot

The people you've been before  
That you don't want around anymore  
That push and shove and won't bend to your will  
I'll keep them still

_-Between the Bars, Elliot Smith_

Author's note: This is a new chapter for those of you that have read the story before. A friend kindly informed me that I couldn't write a highly clichéd Seifer/Quistis without a songfic. I'm not a big fan of songfics, but I did the best I could. The song is Hero/Heroine by Boys Like Girls, and I think it's a very appropriate song for the reluctant couple. Also, I stole some stuff from The Myth of Sysiphus, by Albert Camus. This chapter is yet another 24-page plotbunny that came back to my brain no matter how many times I set it free (and set it on fire). And so I finally wrote it. A big thank you to Aesriella this chapter, my wonderful beta, and a big thank you to all my other friends who offered help.

Chapter 14: The Winter Festival

_Sometimes his dreams were empty- slates of black and grey that passed behind his eyelids with a numb peace. Sometimes he relived old missions- saw himself moving through a strange perspective without the rush of adrenaline and fear that lived in his blood almost constantly in reality. Sometimes, he thought he dreamed about his mother- the empty, aching memory of being enfolded, of lips against his temple and a warm, wet sensation like rain on his cheeks._

_Sometimes he dreamed about the flower field, the vague perfume of flowers and the world crumbling beneath his feet._

_Sometimes she was waiting there._

_Her hair was always black and shining as a raven's wing, her duster brushing the tops of the flowers. Always, he walked towards her, pulled forward by a force of ether or eternity, reaching towards her, reaching towards the warmth of her body and the warmth of being wanted. **These** things never changed. But **she…**she was often different._

_Sometimes she turned, and it was her smile, her dark eyes warm and welcoming, her lips and her hair and her hands, reaching out for him, enfolding him-_

_Sometimes she turned, and it was the witch's face, her lips stained blood-red and her eyes dark with dreams, her claws and her teeth and her anger reaching out to cut him-_

_Sometimes she wore no face at all, only the empty, open shell suffused with light, the terrible glitter of the witch's soul as she reached out to him, pulling him into her arms, into the fathomless black of her core, dragging him into oblivion-_

_It was this version that greeted him tonight, her face an open, mocking shell of the girl that once wore the flesh before him. He struggled to resist her, tore against the traitor heart that reached out with his hand in return, and her hands were so cold, and her body was fire-_

He woke up to the dark and the luminescence of his alarm clock against the wall. He was cold with sweat, and breathing hard, and then a hand was on him, _warm_-

He jerked his gaze to the other side of his bed, and it was her this time, her dark eyes clouded with sleep and her expression worried. "What is it? A bad dream?"

He felt her reach for him, with her arms and along the link of their connection, but he resisted. "It's nothing."

She frowned, but allowed him to shut her out. She could have pressed the connection- she was powerful enough, but she respected his privacy more times than not. "Do you want to talk about it?"

_I dreamed you became a monster. That's all._

He shook his head, running a hand through his sweat-soaked hair. He touched her arm, and she was soft, and her eyes were bright, and she was beautiful, not the carapace of the woman that waited in his dreams, ensnaring him. She was here with him, alive, and he kissed her, willing himself into the present, tearing himself away from the dark and the dismay of the dream, and she welcomed him as he rolled her over, yielding and warm and willing, her lips on his skin, her voice in his ear, her legs wrapped around his waist and her fingertips ghosting along his back. She was not a ghost, and she was not a monster, she was his, and she was here with him, now, and now was all that mattered-

"_Rinoa_."

_He had asked her a question once, after the war, after Time Compression and after the party, when they lay tangled in the sheets and the magnitude of everything seemed to settle. He had asked her what she wanted to do. She had known instantly what he meant._

_She had looked at him then, her expression serious, and he knew that the subject had never left her mind for long. She seemed to choose her words. "I want to stay with you," she'd said, simply. "I want to stay with you and keep going until I…can't anymore." She paused. "Will you stay with me? Will you stay with me…until the end?"_

He stayed awake long after she had fallen asleep, holding her, feeling her heart thrum against his chest like a bird's wing and willing himself to remember these moments, to keep them for both their sakes. He wanted to remember these moments when she stood in front of him, a mad shell of what she was- he wanted to hold onto this moment when she finally succumbed to the thing inside her and became a stranger.

One day, he would look from her to his friends, and there would be a clear decision between them. Irvine, Zell, Selphie, Quistis…they loved her, too, but their way would be clear- they would kill her. He would have to choose his friends, or choose a ghost, and the thing that haunted him the most was that he was not sure which decision he would make.

Something twisted in his chest as he looked down on her, at the thought of losing her, and it occurred to him how stupid and shitty and pointless it all was. He loved her, yes, more than anything, but it was useless- it was a sapling in a monsoon, it was a whisper in a hurricane. It was everything and it was nothing, and most importantly, it would not hold.

Though he could not say for certain just how, he knew that their peace would not last long, that one day he would stand between her and the world and he would have to choose one. He knew that she was whole and pure and that she would fail, that she would slip and it would devour her heart. He knew for a certainty that he loved her beyond all reach and reason, and that, in the end, it would not be enough.

He pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

_Until the end, then…they could live their fairytale. The world owed them that much._

…

…

…

…

The Garden Winter Festival came but once a year, but Selphie's planning for it represented a year-long endeavor which her friends repeatedly endured. She taped a checklist to her desk, kept a multitude of boxes marked in a spare room, and had a smiley face under the date in all of her calendars. As winter dawned, a certain gleam would creep into the pretty brunette's eyes, a gleam that meant trouble and inconvenience for everyone else around her.

Every year, everyone wound up snared in the web of Selphie's committee, no matter the lengths they went to avoid it. Some submitted cheerfully, while others were dragged kicking and screaming into the realms of pre-party planning hell.

This year was no different.

Irvine had been roped in early, and rather cheerfully. As his default setting was in Selphie's dorm room most nights, he had a very low success rate in avoiding being part of the planning and seemed to accept his fate with only a small measure of resistance. He was now perched on a ladder, whistling to himself as he lassoed a string of colored lights onto a pillar.

Rinoa, had signed herself up for the carnage as a willing victim. (Xu had remarked under her breath that "willing victim" was Rinoa's default setting, despite Quistis' elbows) The pretty raven-haired girl was humming to herself as she assisted in the decorations, her soft, sweet voice echoing through the spacious room and grating on those whose presence was less voluntary, namely, everyone else.

As the 'Legendary Heroes from the Second Sorceress Conflict' they could have easily avoided any committee duties for the rest of their natural military careers. As Selphie's friends, however, they were horribly obligated.

Every year, Zell put up a valiant front to avoid participating, and every year, failed spectacularly. This year, he had almost managed to avoid it, taking pains to avoid lunches with Selphie and mysteriously disappearing whenever the topic arose. Quistis suspected he'd junctioned Diablos and was abusing Enc-None, but could prove nothing and was rather jealous of his cunning. Despite his impressive efforts, however, Zell had made the mistake of passing past the lunchroom as they were setting up the decorations, and had been immediately badgered into helping. The martial artist had put up little fight, aside from stammering a few half-formed excuses as he was dragged by his collar into the ballroom. Like the rest of them, he knew resistance was futile. He'd plopped down between Quistis and a second-year cadet, hanging his head and resolutely cutting out every snowflake pattern Selphie put in front of him, looking more like a member of the D-District prisons than a committee member.

Like Rinoa, Quistis had decided to forgo the exhausting task of trying to avoid Selphie this year and agreed to help with the decorations right away. This way, she found, she spent less time hiding in her room, although the time she saved there was taken up by hanging tinsel and trying to get the punch fountain operational. She'd thought about roping Seifer into helping- he was her charge, after all, and required to attend whichever Garden functions she deemed necessary. However, she decided in the end that although the punishment was appealing, she was simply not _that_ cruel. Besides, there was no way she was going to stop what she was doing every five minutes to break up the inevitable spats between him and Zell. They were worse than children.

Seifer was consequently confined to the Library, where presumably he was reviewing procedure and not making trouble. Arya had agreed to monitor his progress and sign off on his alertness- between the past two days and today, Seifer would be staying up a full 72 hours, and would then be put through the rigorous physical tests that all potential SeeDs were required to pass before signing up for the final written and physical exam. Seifer had made it through the first 24 hours easily, (if grumpily), and had passed the following 24 with a staggered, somewhat distant look in his eyes and an increased dependency on curse words to express himself.

It was easy to spot those cadets going through the sleep-deprivation testing- they were usually wandering around garden with an almost inebriated look in their eyes, muttering stupidly or sticking themselves in the arm in the attempt to remain upright. After the party preparations, Quistis intended to drag Seifer down to Kadowaki's office to have his vitals charted.

Irvine, Quistis, and Zell had shared resigned looks and shrugs as they were marched around the ballroom, moving chairs, hanging decorations, and of course, setting up the band stand. Selphie had reserved a semi-popular group called "The AEthers", which were due to arrive later. Quistis had heard a few of their hits, including "Gattling Garden", and could not say that she was particularly impressed. Then again, her tastes ran more to classical than hard rock.

Irvine elbowed her on his way past, grinning and pointing towards a white-draped table. A pair of black boots were peeking out from underneath the tablecloth. It also seemed that their 'fearless leader' had also been ensnared at the last minute, to no one's surprise. She leaned over caught a glimpse of Squall chanting obscenities to himself as he hammered away at the large crystalline punch fountain, and thought she heard Zell mutter something about 'mutiny' as he scraped a folding chair across the floor. She cast a compassionate look at Zell. Had she been feeling better towards the Commander, she might have felt sympathetic. Things being what they were, she hoped the fountain fell on his fat emo head.

The Winter Festival represented one item of few on the Garden Activity Committee's yearly planning list. The festivals, banquets, and trips represented far and few excursions that future SeeDs could enjoy between classes, missions, and physical training, and was an attempt to inject some amount of normalcy into the lives of adolescents who were every day molded into killers and spies. Many students had not enjoyed a normal childhood, and many would not enjoy a long adulthood. Selphie, at her core, was no soldier- she was more of a den mother with a flare for casting, a cheerful klutz with a resistant soul (and the ability to empty a skull of brains with her nunchaku). Ruthlessness had been wired into her during her training, like the rest of them, but Selphie herself remained soft, accessible- she planned parties and committees because her real passion was making people happy, not killing them.

It was easy to forget that at their core, each Garden student represented a tangled mass of hopes, dreams, and hormones- that many were, in fact, still considered children by the eyes of society. The Winter Festival represented a more relaxed, fun, and festive atmosphere than the normally sterile Garden environment provided on a day to day basis, and many students attended. In fact, many students had dates well in advance. The Winter Festival coincided with the New Year countdown, and everyone wanted someone to kiss at midnight.

Every year, Quistis dodged long lines of Trepies and suffered notes, cards, and wilted flower arrangements with waning tolerance. The Trepies were a constant frustration whose worship had only worsened after the war. Far from encouraging her self-esteem, the Trepies had always added to the weight of her responsibility to be perfect- to be an icon, to be a role model for the other students. Selphie routinely tripped over Garden's large supply of potted plants- only last week Zell had crashed his T-board into the new Quad fountain. Irvine's weakness for cadets in short skirts was well-known by all. All of them wore their flaws on their sleeves, a testament to their humanity. But not Quistis Trepe, not the role-model SeeD that was the youngest ever to be made Instructor. Not the girl that had mastered alpha-level blue magic when she was only 16.  No, Quistis Trepe could be depended upon to lead missions, clean up paperwork, and to fill in wherever needed. She was not fondly defined for her flaws- she was suffocated by perfection.

_Why couldn't they see the moon didn't shine out of her ass? Why couldn't they see she didn't _**want**_ to be worshipped? _

The Winter Festival would begin in less than three hours, and Quistis found herself without a date, without a midnight kiss, without a dress, and without a prayer of escaping the obligation of appearing at the festival. Rinoa and Squall would be there together, Selphie and Irvine, and Quistis had it on good authority that Arya, 'Library Girl' was tonight's DJ, so of course Zell would be in attendance also. The only person who would have made attending bearable was Xu. Xu would have drunk too much champagne and would have run a scathing and sarcastic commentary on the event and everyone attending, but Xu was on a last-minute mission and unlikely to make it back in time.

Quistis snapped her scissors shut around a snowflake corner with more force than was necessary, and wound up cutting the tip of her finger. Muttering, she set down her scissors and stuck her finger in her mouth. If she had to cut out one more snowflake chain, she was going to murder someone at random (Selphie), plain and simple. She set down her pattern and got up, going to see if other less irritating realms of the ballroom required her attention.

Rinoa and Selphie seemed to be the only ones really enjoying themselves. Selphie was chattering away, marking things down on her clipboard and directing traffic, creampuffs, and strings of snowflakes. Rinoa was cheerfully walking around the room, a light mist falling like twinkling tissue paper from her fingertips and coating the entire room in a soft glimmer. Quistis wasn't sure which spell it was, but with Rinoa's sorceress magic, it could have been anything.

_Leave it to Rinoa to take a multi-generational curse of supreme power and destruction and modify it into something straight out of Homes and Balamb Gardens_, thought Quistis.

Rinoa's laughter interrupted Quistis' train of thought. "If Selphie sees you two, she's going to flip out!" The pretty sorceress was looking past her, into a far corner of the room, her eyes twinkling with mirth.

Quistis turned to where Irvine and Zell were parading, their arms and legs moving in mechanical jerks. The two were strung head to toe in blinking lights, and they were followed by a litany of giggles from admirers.

"WE ARE THE NORG." Droned Zell in a monotone. "SURRENDER NOW. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

"AFFIRMATIVE." Echoed Irvine. "WE WILL ASSIMILATE YOUR BIONIC DATA AND ADD IT TO OUR OWN FAT ASS. THERE IS NO ESCAPE."

Quistis rolled her eyes and tried to hide a smile.

"QUISTIS. BECOME THE NORG." Chanted Zell, walking towards her with his arms out, twinkling like a festive zombie. The Shumi still employed by Balamb Garden were probably not going to be pleased about this.

"Zell," she started, trying to inject enough seriousness into her voice for a warning tone. "Don't you dare."

"Bujurururu! OFFER-THE-SeeD's-HEAD-ON-A-SILVER-PLATTER- AND-PRETEND-WE-OBEY-THE-SORCERESS!!" yelled Zell, looking far from a bloated, money-grubbing Shumi but imitating the voice rather well. He held up a blinking red light. "I WILL ATTACK SeeD WITH MAGIC!"

"You two!" shouted Selphie, smacking Zell and Irvine on the head in turn with her clipboard. "The party starts in less than three hours!"

"Ow, relax, Selphie!" said Zell, tripping over the colored lights in an attempt to disentangle himself. "We were just havin' fun!"

"There's no _time_ for that!" replied the petite brunette, stamping her foot.

"No time for fun? But darlin', isn't this a party? And aren't parties supposed t'be fun?" drawled Irvine. "We were just, y'know, gettin' in the spirit!" He arranged his handsome features into a hurt expression. "Don't you _want_ us to be in the spirit?"

Selphie gave the two her meanest look, which looked more cute than menacing. "Ooooooh! Just get to work, you two! Quisty, keep them in line!"

Quistis put up her hands. "I'm in charge of decorations, not babysitting."

"Well, now you're in charge of both!" shouted Selphie as she stalked off, yelling to one of the students to put the cream puffs on the appetizer table, not the punch table. One of the younger cadets actually saluted her.

"Next year, I say we get a Wendigo-grade tranquilizer, and use it on her a week before the whole stupid thing starts," muttered Zell.

"I second that notion." Replied Quistis.

"Third." Irvine raised his hand.

"Motion carries." Said Quistis solemnly.

The three exchanged a look, then burst into laughter.

"The hell with more decorations. I say we tie Leonhart up in these things and torture _him_ into a festive spirit." Suggested Irvine, winding the string.

"Do it and die," came a voice behind the punch fountain, followed by a litany of loud banging.

"Are you _fixing_ the fountain, Leonhart, or demolishing the thing?" asked Irvine.

"Whatever," said the punch bowl.

It was a well-known fact that Squall Leonhart could only be coaxed into the party spirit though the use of threats or alcohol, and that it had only been accomplished five times in recorded history. There was a sixth incident that no one was at liberty to talk about it, as it was part of a highly classified mission that involved a lot of misused support magic, nasty status effects, and one completely ruined hotel suite at the Esthar Inn.

A loud crash turned her attention from the ill-tempered Commander. Zell Dincht was sprawled out on his back, tangled in lights.

"Zell, I'm sorry!" exclaimed Rinoa. "I didn't mean to do the floor!"

 "'S all right, Rin," wheezed Zell.

Irvine glanced around, his eyes taking in the sparkles. "Rin, the heck is that stuff, anyway?"

The sorceress colored. "Oh, it's just a blizzaga variant that I've…modified a bit. It should wear off in a couple of hours."

"Way cool." Managed Zell tightly, staring up at the ceiling.

Quistis checked her watch. "Well, I'm out. Time to check on Seifer, and run him through his paces."

"Lucky you," Muttered Zell, as Rinoa helped him up.

"How's the old lap dog doing?" asked Irvine. "Still awake?"

"Barely."

"Don't envy him that portion of the test. Accidentally stuck a fork in my eye on hour 64…had to spent the rest of my time in the infirmary and take the test with only one workin' eye. Well, we'll see ya at the party tonight, Quis!"

Quistis waved over her shoulder hoping that by the time the party rolled around, they would have forgotten to force her presence.

….

…

…

..

Seifer, his head propped up against his fist, had been re-reading the same sentence for the past hour, trying to get the information to stick in his brain. Everything in the room had taken on a floaty, drunken quality, a kind of senseless stream of sensory input that served no apparent function but to keep his eyes open.

_68 hours down, four hours to go…_

Rajin and Fujin had stopped by a few hours, bringing lunch and conversation. Fujin had also brought the almost constant process of kicking him in the shins to the table every time his head began to slump. Unfortunately, they'd had to leave for a mission debriefing half an hour ago, leaving Seifer with stacks of boring books, a librarian, and some guy with a stick up his ass that kept yelling at him to "shhhh" every five minutes. He really hoped Trepe showed up soon- the good Instructor could be counted upon to be a diversion, if nothing else. In four hours, he would run through the gauntlet of fighting a few monsters in the training center, take some stupid paper test, and sign off on a few documents.

And then, he would sleep like the dead for twelve hours with no interruptions.

"Back there," he could hear the pig-tailed girl saying. The mousy-haired young woman had periodically walked past him for the past few hours, occasionally slamming a heavy book down for no apparent reason.

Quistis's expression was bemused as she took in his rumpled appearance- disheveled hair, blank expression, and his obviously bloodshot eyes. "Come on," she said, gesturing at him to follow. "You're due for your physical evaluation."

Seifer blinked. "Where've you been all this time? Trepie orgy?"

Quistis cocked her head at him, wondering briefly if he had been raised by a pack of dire wolves before his admission to Garden. It would explain that lack of manners, at least. "Is there a non-lecherous thought in your head, ever?"

The young man leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head. She briefly entertained the thought of tipping him over. Seifer chuckled. "Nope."

The Instructor rolled her eyes. "If you _must_ know, I was helping to decorate for the Winter Festival."

"Sounds like fun."

"A mile a minute," muttered Quistis. "Hurry up, Kadowaki's waiting on us."

Seifer grumbled as he got to his feet, the world swaying unsteadily as he tried to keep his eyes in focus. He swayed against a nearby bookshelf, the solid weight against his side making his eyes droop. If only he could close his eyes, if just for a moment-

A sharp pain jumped up in his arm, and he snapped his eyes open to see Quistis standing in front of him, her expression less than patient.

The little harpy had actually _pinched_ him.

"Fuck, I'm _coming_!" he snarled at her. "No need to get violent."

Kadowaki was no more merciful than Quistis, and Seifer walked out of the woman's office with his eyes burning from her pen light and his arm stinging from a vaccination she'd 'claimed' he'd needed. To top it off, Quistis had caught him almost-dozing against the medicine cabinet and had given him a kick in the shin that was still stinging.

Seifer rubbed at the offending arm and glared at Quistis out of the corner of his eye. He was surrounded by bloodthirsty women.

"What now?" he grumbled. "Shall I lay on a bed of tacks? Dance around the Garden fountain in my underwear? Some other pointless effort that takes up 72 hours of my fucking time?"

Quistis was not amused. "I'll assume it's sleep deprivation that's making you so intolerable. After all, you're a regular ray of sunshine usually."

Seifer lifted an eyebrow at her. "Are you actually using sarcasm, Trepe? That's a new tactic for you."

"What can I say, _Almasy_," she replied, irritated by his mocking use of her last name. "Spending time with you has sunk me to all new lows."

Quistis's patience, it seemed, was not to be tested today.  Either Puberty Boy had announced his engagement to Princess Bitch, or the Trepies had angered their deity though some worship ritual gone terribly wrong. Either way, her mood suited him fine- lack of sleep had sharpened his already abrasive personality to a new, harder grit.

By the time they reached the cafeteria, he'd earned another shin-kick, this one having nothing to do with him falling asleep standing up.

….

….

Seifer's back was pressed up hard against the plastic-backed chairs of the cafeteria and his left hand was pressed into his fork tines- he was relying on any uncomfortable sensation to keep him grounded in the land of the conscious, although his methods had proved mostly disappointing so far. He'd nearly nodded off twice already, once on the way to the cafeteria and once in line. After a flurry of ineffective pinching, Quistis had sent him to the seat with the promise that she'd bring him something to eat.

The truth was that the sleep-deprivation had him on tenterhooks for more than one reason. As much as not sleeping for almost 72 hours had set him on edge, there were more pressing things on his mind that worried him far more.

The Sorceress-Knight bond was a strange phenomenon, one that even a sorceress-junkie like Dr. Odine still had not fully grasped. The scientist had sent several queries his way since his re-admission into garden- requests for an interview, as well as a legal document that would release his brain to Odine's lab in the (anticipated) event of his demise. Seifer's wastebasket had filled up in response to these attempts, and finally, he had left Odine's assistant a rather nasty, expletive-laden message that told Odine precisely where he could stick future messages. He hadn't heard from them since, although he was pretty sure that Odine hadn't given up the quest for his brain just yet.

Odine's obsession had roots- he was the only known knight in known history to have survived the 'death' of his sorceress. According to historical documentation, most sorceresses, in the throes of the curse leaving their bodies, (or in a general fit) took their knights with them into whatever hell lurked at the bottom of that power, killing them in the process. The bond between Sorceress and knight was not a link, exactly, it was more like a fly in a spider web. Seifer knew firsthand that sorceresses didn't do symbiosis.

That first night, Ultimecia had made him her knight. When she'd marked him, when she'd plunged her consciousness into his, like an insect jamming their proboscis into a slice of ripe fruit, she'd created a link, an almost visceral connection that had wound from her mind to his, a series of shackles that chained him to her no matter how hard he would struggle later. From that very instant, he'd seen into the shell of the thing, the core of her, and what he found had inverted his little world...and he realized what he had done. Even at the height of the disaster, when Ultimecia was at her strongest within Matron, when her power filled his mind like a physical current, he'd been tearing at himself to be free of it. He didn't envy Leonhart his present connection to Rinoa…in fact, a feeling lurked beneath his subconscious that felt a lot like pity.

Although his sorceress was gone, a vestigial part of the connection still remained in Seifer's brain.

She had left her ghosts in him, just as she had left her mark on him.

He could feel it sometimes, itching at the back of his skull, the thing reaching out to nothing and drawing back again as he lay awake at night. It was a grasping hand in his subliminal mind, opening and closing with enough force to give him migraines. During the first days after Time Compression, there were nights he would have taken an ice pick to his skull if it would have ended the squirming in his brain. Fortunately, the sensation faded with time, and only rose in him in moments of profound weakness.

_Like this one._

Exhausted, his brain had slowly shut down his defenses, and he could do nothing but sit idly by and watch them drop, one by one.  He felt a stirring sense of panic coupled with the exhaustion, as if he was about to fall asleep face down in a puddle of water, the promise of drowning looming up at him. He would not tell Quistis…not Kadowaki. What could he say?

_If I don't sleep, I'm going to dream of getting my ass handed to me by my adopted mother?_

He had enough problems without the promise of the psych ward breathing down his neck.

Seifer blinked hard, trying to clear his gaze. The cafeteria lights were swimming.

_"Seifer…my knight….my little skeleton boy…."_

He dug his fingernails into the back of his head, scratching at an imaginary itch. _It was getting worse._

Quistis was grabbing them some dinner. He was supposed to sit here and stay awake. His eyes flickered up at the burning florescent lights, and his brain now fairly swam with old memories and old itches.

_"But what of the skeleton boy?__ He thinks to overcome, but first he must come. Come here, then…and I will show you the eye of the storm…"_

_Her hands on him, her hands in his skull, sifting through his memories with all the care of a wood chipper.__ Her teeth on his earlobe. "You long to be a good boy, don't you? You want to please your mistress. Here, let me show you…"_

_The empty glitter of her eyes, and her lips around him, in his ear, on his flesh, whispering, swallowing him whole, and down, down into the darkness, and she was teeth, all teeth, and they were chewing him, crushing him, and he tore at her, and even as he was thrashing he could hear her laughter-_

_"Little boy, you are only tearing yourself apart…but come, see, look, such pretty pieces-"_

He opened his eyes, gasping for breath, his fingers curled into the formica countertop as if trying to find purchase on a slippery slope. His body was strung tight, muscles snapped and shriveled against his bones, waiting for the impact that always accompanied the memory.

Several pairs of eyes were on him. Some hostile, some curious, some amused. He sat up in the chair and gave them all a sneer, running a shaky hand through his hair.

Quistis, unfortunately, had just sat directly across from him- her expression was filled with concern. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he snarled. "I just need to fucking sleep, what do you _think's_wrong with me? _Hyne_."

Unaffected by the voracity of his remark, Quistis checked her watch. "Three and a half more hours yet. After dinner, you can attend the Winter Festival. That should keep you awake before your test."

"_That's_ supposed to be an incentive? Watching a bunch of pre-pubescent morons dry humping each other on the dance floor is going to inspire me to stay awake?"

Quistis shrugged, and tucked into her salad. She gestured to the tray in front of him, which featured a sandwich, an orange, and a bottle of apple juice. "You should eat something."

"Thanks, _Mom_."

Quistis gripped her fork with more economy than was necessary, rolling her eyes at the ceiling as if to say, _"Why me?" _

 "Just eat something. You might feel better."

Seifer rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "I doubt it."

Exasperated, Quistis threw down her fork. "Were it not regulation that these sleep-deprivation tests require 24-hour personal supervision, I would have had you confined to one of Garden's post-mission padded rooms eighteen hours ago."

"You know, _you're_ the first person _I'd_ pick to spend almost 72 continuous hours with, too. If I recall correctly, you actually went and slept for sixteen of those hours while I got watched by Nida, the walking anti-personality. There's another supervisor I'd have hand-picked myself.  In fact, while we're on the topic of personal choice-" He continued, only to realize that the second half of his sentence had been abruptly cut off. He narrowed his eyes at Quistis, who was wearing an expression that was half-furious, half-smug.

The bitch had cast Silence on him...silently.

His throat was tingling with a tightening sensation, as if chords of ice had wrapped around his neck. The pressure the magic caused was not enough to block his airway, but it _was_ more than enough to render his vocal cords useless.

He expressed his feelings about this new development with an even more colorful vocabulary, with the same results. Quistis' smile grew wider, and a few passing cadets wore horrified expressions.

Lip readers, apparently.

Seifer thought about throwing his orange at Trepe, but decided against it. He didn't want to spend the rest of the night in the detention center and have to re-take the stupid test.

Apparently content with the new arrangements, Quistis tucked back into her salad, a satisfied look on her face. Grinding his teeth, Seifer sat back in his seat, pointedly ignoring his meal and everything else around him. He could feel his eyes slipping shut again- maybe Trepe, lost in her self-absorbed congratulations, would not notice if he shut his eyes, just for a minute…

"Never again!" huffed Selphie, slamming her clipboard on the table and making Seifer jump a clear foot out of his chair. "Seifer," she gave him a brief nod, slipping into the chair closest to Quistis. "I'm never doing this Winter Festival planning again! It's a thankless job, I tell you!"

"You do realize," said Quistis calmly, "That you say this every year."

Selphie's face contorted into a frown. "Well, I _mean_ it this year! Did you know Zell actually called me a 'crazy over-caffeinated dictator?' He threatened to cast 'Sleep' on me if I didn't get out of the ballroom!" The pretty brunette huffed. "The nerve!"

Seifer chuckled- fortunately, no sound came out.

"Well, you're finished now, aren't you?" asked Quistis reasonably. "Why don't you go back to your dorm and relax? I'm sure everything looks fine."

Selphie eyed Seifer for a moment, as if it was actually sinking in that she was sitting across from the man who'd blown up Trabia Garden. Something dark flashed across her eyes before her pretty features arranged themselves into something more polite. Quistis watched the expression carefully. Selphie, though more forgiving than anyone she had met, was only human, after all.

Selphie's internal conflict had evidently ended with the decision to try to be friendly. "Seifer, maybe you'd like to be on the Winter Garden Festival Planning Committee next year?"

It was doubly fortunate that Selphie was not a lip reader, and that Quistis' spellcasting abilities were flawless. As a result, the pert brunette did not hear his reply.

"What's wrong with **him**?" asked Selphie, leaning closer and awarding him a confused frown.

**Besides**_ the obvious?__ thought Quistis._

"Laryngitis." Replied Quistis calmly, taking a sip of her water. Quistis knew as well as anyone did about the Garden regulations prohibiting the use of status magic on fellow students. However, she was willing to overlook this particular rule in favor of her own sanity. Besides, it was either that or strangle him…she thought Cid would appreciate her choosing the debatably lesser of two evils.

"You should try gargling with salt water." Said Selphie. "I've heard that works."

Seifer threw both women his best glare.

"Quistis," said Selphie, giving up on Seifer and turning around to address her friend. "You'll be coming to the Festival tonight, of course? You **promised**!" she accused, her tone changing when she saw the look of hesitation that flashed across her friend's face.

"I have a lot to do," said Quistis. "You know that Seifer's on the sleep deprivation portion of the pre-SeeD exam, and I have to supervise-"

"So bring him along!" ordered Selphie, earning her two horrified stares in return. "All members of the committee are required to attend the festival. It…it…raises morale, damnit!" she insisted, bringing her fist down hard on her clipboard.

The hall speakers beeped- the last period of the day had begun.

Selphie winced. "Oh, crap! The band will have arrived by now!" she squealed, gathering her materials and sprinting out the door. "I'll see you there tonight, Quisty!" she shouted over her shoulder.

The phrase sounded more like a threat than a friendly parting shot.

Seifer was left with an impending sense of doom and the notion that whatever marbles that the messenger girl had left in her already addled brain had rolled out at some point during the day. Quistis' expression reflected his feelings about attending any Garden social function- it was filled with dread. She gathered her plate and glass onto her tray, pushing her seat back as she got to her feet. "Come on," she grumbled. "We might as well head down to the Training Center, and see if I can't get you admitted early."

Seifer scowled at her, pointing at his throat.

"I'll release it," replied Quistis. "_When we get there_," she added under her breath. With that, she got up, stomping out of the cafeteria. Reduced to lewd hand gestures as a means of self-expression, Seifer stomped after her.

…

…

…

Cid's office had changed little over the years, except to accommodate more paperwork and to allow the migration of a new photo or two. One large picture had been framed behind his desk- a newspaper clipping that featured 8 smiling people, their eyes lit up by the camera flash. In the front, Zell and Selphie crouched, nearly touching heads- Selphie was making a triumphant fist and Zell was sporting a cheeky thumb's up. In the back row, Irvine was folding his arms, smiling lazily, and Edea was standing behind Cid, her reluctant smile mixed with embarrassment. In the middle, Squall was making an effort to look disinterested, while a smiling Rinoa peeked out from behind his arm. Quistis stood next to the happy couple, her smile firmly in place but her eyes looking off camera, as if searching for an escape route. Below the picture, a large typset blared:  BALAMB HEROES, HOME AT LAST!

Serabin turned from the picture as Cid entered his office, Xu in tow. "What news?" he asked, standing to attention.

"As you were, SeeD Glyphias," replied Cid tiredly, motioning both Serabin and Xu to seats. "Xu, update him."

"The situation hasn't changed," replied Xu grimly. "I've tried all outside lines, and no response. None of the surrounding villages has seen T.Garden in weeks, either."

Cid took off his glasses, running a hand over his face. "Serabin? Your news?"

"All terrorist networks are quiet." Replied Glyphias. "I've tried old lines, old connections…no one's taking responsibility."

"What of the Galbadians?" asked Xu. "We've been looking underground for sabotage, but-"

Serabin shook his head. "I thought of that, too. All our bugs are quiet. There's some question as to recent fund transfers concerning weapons deals for the local army, but nothing concerning communications. The Senate knows nothing, it would appear, or is feigning ignorance."

"This is not good news." Said Cid tiredly. "I'd hoped a local hacker group was responsible, but it seems likely they'd have taken responsibility by now."

"I have Arya on it," said Serabin. "Proactively, there's not much else to be done at this point."

"Xu?" Cid raised an eyebrow.

"I agree with Serabin," replied the young woman. "Our local contracts in Trabia end in about a month. I propose that if the situation hasn't changed by then, that we take a mission out to the source, and see for ourselves. The system was rarely used…it could very well be that no one has noticed that it's not operational." Xu paused. "You…think there's something behind it, don't you, sir?"

Cid shook his head. "As you've both said, it's too early to say. I want this kept confidential. It's not a cause for serious concern…not yet." Cid's heavy gaze contradicted him. "Excellent work, you too. Mission reports on my desk tomorrow. Now, off with you. There is the Winter Festival tonight, is there not? Go, have some fun, you've earned it." With that, the Headmaster strode from the room, a thoughtful expression on his face.

Serabin and Xu shared a look.

"More than he's letting on, don't you think?" asked Serabin.

"Definitely." Replied Xu, getting to her feet and popping the kinks out of her neck. "You going to the Festival?"

Serabin grimaced. "My personal desires would have me absent. Propriety and my Garden status dictate otherwise."

Xu grinned at him, aiming a friendly punch at his shoulder as she passed him. "Come on, there's free champagne for the upperclassmen. Even **_I_** can put in an appearance at one of Tilmit's social abortions in the interest of facility-sponsored public drunkenness. Besides," Xu glanced over her shoulder as she reached the door, "I have it on good authority that 'propriety' has required the presence of one Quistis Trepe, as well. See you there." The door closed around Xu Chang's mischievous gaze and her scheming smile.

Serabin raised an eyebrow as he placed his mission report on Cid's desk. His more optimistic nature wanted to believe that Cid and Xu were correct, that this recent event could be attributed to nothing more sinister than human error.

He stared out beyond Cid's desk, watching the sun recede behind Trabia's snow-capped mountains in a sea of crimson cloud.

_Why did he get the feeling, then, that they _**all**_ had a bad feeling about this?_

…

…

…

…

…

Seifer adjusted his hand from underneath his chin, and nearly fell over. After reluctantly undoing Silence, Quistis had dropped him off at the written portion of the test. Nida-what's-his-face was proctoring, and for the next hour, Seifer had been surrounded by fellow cadets that were either concentrating on their tests with every ounce of consciousness they had left, drooling all over their answer sheets, or catatonic. One cadet had actually fallen out of her desk, and was now snoring in the middle of the floor.

_Question 58: What is proper procedure in a hostage scenario wherein a cadet (non-civ) is the hostage?_

_Take a shot if one opens, attempting meanwhile to negotiate._ _Contact Garden immediately and wait for further instructions._ _Garden does not negotiate. Continue with mission objectives._ _Make a Moomba dance the Mamba._

**That can't be right.**

Seifer blinked hard, and looked back down at the paper.

_Make an offer, contact Garden, and wait on a response._

**There. That made more sense. Now think.**

**The non-civ disclaimer is important. If it's a civ…then….**

Seifer wracked his brain, which was now the sleep-deprived equivalent of a roller coaster ride that only lurched down.

Suddenly, an image of Quistis Trepe appeared before him, wearing a pink bathing suit and holding a beach ball under one arm. _"In a hostage situation, it's important to distinguish between civ and non-civ scenarios. If the hostage is civ, we negotiate and contact local authorities. If the hostage is one of Garden's however, we proceed with the mission objectives regardless. Garden's somewhat controversial policy is that we do **not** negotiate with terrorists for one of our own."_

Seifer blinked, and 'Beach Quistis' disappeared.

He circled in the general direction of C-his vision was beginning to go.

_Congratulations. You have reached the end of Garden's Sleep Deprivation Mental Assessment. Please set down your pencil, remain awake, and wait for your proctor to collect your exam._

Seifer set down his pencil, wiped a spittle of pre-sleep drool from his mouth, and angled himself in his chair until the seat poked into one of his vertebra. Uncomfortable? Yes. Uncomfortable enough to keep him up? Doubtful. He could probably sleep on a Cactuar mattress now, with as tired as he was.

Across from him, one student's head drooped down, embedding his pencil in his eye. Chaos ensued, and Nida was forced to page for an escort to Dr. Kadowaki's office. The students blinked sleepily after their fellow soldier. A few made sympathetic grumbling noises. Another student fell out of his desk. Seifer tried not to laugh.

Suddenly, Quistis breezed into the room. She was still wearing her irritated look; however, she had changed the rest of her attire. She was now wearing a dark red number- a skirt and halter set with a black shawl that ended in gauzy wisps below her knees. Her hair had been done up in a hurried French twist, a change from her normal fishtail. Her glasses were also missing. On her feet, however, she wore her same black combat boots. "Has Cadet Almasy finished his exam?"

Nida glanced up, motioning at Seifer. "Are you done?"

"Yeah."

"Yes, _sir_." Snapped Nida.

Seifer stalked up, tossing his exam on Nida's desk and offering him a mocking salute. "At ease, soldier," he muttered, shuffling past a now red-faced Nida.

Quistis pursed her lips in an attempt to hide what might have been a smile. "Just for that," she told him, "You're going to the Winter Ball."

"Heartless bitch," he muttered.

….

…….

……….

Seifer glanced at Quistis out of the corner of his eye. Quistis had to know, on some primal level, that she was attractive. She did not usually seem surprised by male attention, and knew how to diffuse interest as effortlessly as a flick of the wrist. Hell, no one wore a peach suit that zippered up past the navel without some sort of confidence, no matter how misplaced.

Knowing her beauty was one thing. There was _knowing_ a strength and _using_ it, and Seifer knew how to do both. Back in his days at Garden, he'd known he was talented, had known he was good-looking by conventional standards.  He also knew exactly how far those things could get him. How far he could push the administration, and how far he could push his luck around the opposite sex. He hadn't only used that knowledge- he'd more often than not _abused_ it.

Using that knowledge was beyond Quistis- she far was too filled with fear of rejection. Quistis was both her own personal victory and her own private wrecking ball: she had both the weapon of beauty and the tendency to impale herself on it with her own self-doubt.

Tonight, dressed in red sheath of a dress and wearing her trademark ball-busting combat boots beneath, she stood at the edge of the crowd, her arms wrapped around herself like chain mail. She had all the weapons of a mature woman, true, but unlike someone like Rinoa, she didn't know how to use them. Ironic, really, as the Timber princess had nothing on the instructor's curves.

It was all terribly amusing- Trepe was a lioness with claws a mile wide, and she wound up wrestling with _herself_ more often than not. He had to chuckle at the irony.

"Seifer? Wake up."  Quistis scanned the ballroom, looking for a table in back. "Come on. Let's sit down."

He hadn't actually been sleeping, but he assumed he must look it. "How many more hours?" he asked, slipping into the chair she pointed at.

The band finished another generic number, and the crowd began to clap.

Quistis grabbed a champagne flute off a passing waiter. "One and a half, then you can go and take your physical exam in the Training center. I believe Instructor Green is proctoring that one, so it'll be fair. You'll have to draw your spells off Instructor Green, that's part one of the test, effecting Drawing- I'd recommend a fire variant, and an ice variant as well…bolt magic isn't terribly useful against most of what's in there. You'll be fighting three different monster types, and one variable. Be sure you have some status magic on you-sometimes it's a T-Rexaur. "

_T-Rexaur?__ Piece of cake. Did he have status magic on him? Furthermore, where was Hyperion? Did he even have underwear on today? Fuck, this sleep shit really messed with your head._

Trepe, meanwhile, was still talking. "-I'd recommend casting sleep, and maybe double."

_No problem. He'd cast Sleep on himself, and then-_

Pain in his arm. She was pinching him again.  "Wake **up**," she hissed between her teeth. "I'm not supposed to be pinching you to stay awake, you know."

"Well Hyne, feel free to stop anytime," he grumbled irritably.

The band had picked up again, and he found himself half-listening to the lyrics.

_"It's too late baby, there's no turning around  
I've got my hands in my pocket and my head in a cloud  
This is how I do  
When I think about you-"_

He rolled his eyes at the lyrics, and wound up staring at the ceiling. The messenger girl had outdone herself, although he somehow doubted the word 'subtle' was in Selphie's vocabulary anyway. The walls and the ceiling were shining with something that looked like icy glitter, and thousands of paper snowflakes twirled in the draft caused by hundreds of waltzing people. Waiters were walking around with trays of champagne for the upperclassmen, and a particularly large crystal chandelier had been tinted blue, casting a cool shroud of color over the entire ballroom and making it look like a real snowfield.

_"I never thought that you could break me apart  
I keep a sinister smile and a hold of my heart  
You want to get inside  
Then you can get in line  
But not this time_

Cause you caught me off guard  
Now I'm running and screaming

I feel like a hero and you are my heroine-"

**Heroes.**** Ha.**

Seifer glanced over at Quistis, who was now on her second glass of champagne. She was hunkered down in her seat, as if hoping not to be noticed.

"Do you believe in heroes, Trepe?"

Quistis raised an eyebrow. "You're asking _me_?"

Seifer scowled. "Do you see anyone else in the vicinity?"

She folded her arms. "I suppose I don't, not really. I mean, they called us heroes after the war but most of the time, we were just trying not to get killed on the mission. I don't think any of us felt very heroic." She remembered that stretch of time poignantly, and she had never felt heroic. They rarely slept, kept awake only by the bouts of pure adrenaline that was the result of getting shot at, stabbed, or strangled, worrying about each other, the location of their enemies, and the general state of the world. It was a sick feeling, one that had lasted for weeks and invaded their dreams long after the war was over.

Seifer was looking at her with what could only be described as disbelief. "You didn't feel heroic? Not even when you were fighting me?" he sneered.

"Especially then," she said, almost too quietly for him to hear.

"I guess I just don't get the point." He muttered. On the dance floor, couples were sweeping past them, blurs of shiny shoes and floaty skirts that drifted across his gaze.

_"I won't try to philosophize  
I'll just take a deep breath and I'll look in your eyes  
This is how I feel  
And it's so surreal  
I got a closet filled up to the brim  
With the ghosts of my past and the skeletons  
And I don't know why  
You'd even try  
But I won't lie-"_

"The point of what?" asked Quistis over the music, who was now sipping on her third glass of champagne.

"Fighting. Wars. This-" he said, gesturing around. "I mean, it's all part of an imperfect system, isn't it? I mean, we all _know_ it, too. It's not like any of us are idealists."

"I wouldn't rule out the new cadets," mused Quistis.

"Fine. Any of us that _matter_." He corrected, ignoring Quistis' disapproving look. "The point is, don't you have to be an idealist to change an imperfect system?"

_Is that what you were, Seifer? An idealist?_

Quistis set down her flute, looking out at the dancing couples with an unreadable emotion in her eyes. "I think you can recognize an imperfect system, Seifer, and still try to change it." She glanced over at him, absorbing the doubtful look on his face. "You don't think so?"

He shrugged. "An imperfect system exists because there's no such thing as a perfect system. It's just the way people are. If you create a set of expectations, you're just going to be disappointed."

Quistis' attention was completely focused on him, now. "I think the only constant in any system, imperfect or not, is change. Change can be for the good, or for the bad. It all has to do with the intention of the agent of change. And that's us, isn't it? All of us?"

"Yeah…" replied Seifer. "But for every good intention, you've got about ten self-serving pricks out to rule the world."

_Like me_, he thought ruefully.

"You can't change a system if you're taking one step towards progress and ten steps back towards the dark ages," he continued.

Quistis was frowning at him. "Then why are you here?"

"That's the question of the hour, isn't it," he muttered, but for once, it was said without hostility.

He glanced over at her. A few wisps of hair had come out of her twist, and she was looking almost wistfully towards the band, rolling the stem of her champagne flute between her fingers.

"What you're talking about," began Quistis. "I suppose it reminds me of a story I read. It was about a man named Sisyphus. Have you heard of it?"

"Sissy-fuss?" he repeated, frowning. "No."

"Well the story went that the old gods had condemned this man to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain. The man would push and push, but stone would always fall back of its own weight, and he would have to start over. The idea behind the punishment, I suppose, was that the effort was hopeless…that being condemned to such a menial fate was worse than death."

Seifer was inclined to agree.

"But some didn't think so," continued Quistis. "Some thought that Sisyphus's labor was a denial of the gods- that the labor, the struggle, is what gives purpose to a life. And they said…what was it? That the universe seemed to Sisyphus neither sterile nor futile. That every atom of the stone, each mineral flake of the night-filled mountain in itself formed a world…they said that the struggle itself toward the heights was enough to fill a person's heart. That maybe…maybe Sisyphus was actually happy. I guess the meaning behind that would be that our labors aren't worthless." Quistis shrugged. "Maybe there's truth to that. That there's beauty in the effort, however futile." She shrugged, smiling a little. "I liked that story as a cadet, particularly when I was struggling."

Seifer thought that story came from someone who had major validation issues in life, but still, it was a nice thought. Idyllic, but nice. There followed an almost comfortable pause between them, filled with the music, the chatter, and the clink of glasses.

"You know, Trepe, you're not half ugly when you take off that stupid uniform," he blurted.

_Where the hell did that come from?_

The young woman's frown had deepened. "Are you…was that….a _compliment_?" she asked.

_Was it? What the hell was wrong with him?_

Screams erupted near the refreshment table- the punch fountain had apparently exploded, showering the nearest cadets in bright pink slop. Tilmitt had apparently been caught in the middle of it- she was screaming something unintelligible, dripping wet and dripping red, and next to her, the cowboy was laughing. Dancers were beginning to slip on the floor, and without warning, a large portion of the dance floor wound up on their backs. Squall had a hand over his face, and Dincht was on the floor….laughing his fool head off. The band, apparently used to worse venues, kept playing, undaunted-

_"And I feel a weakness coming on  
Never felt so good to be so wrong  
Had my heart on lockdown  
And then you turned me around-"_

Quistis had glanced over at the punch fountain, and was doing something he had only seen her do once before on a barren snowfield- she was laughing. Something happened to her eyes when she laughed- some wall that was there every other second of the day dropped down and for an instant, she looked young. Her eyes were a clear shade of blue without the glare of the glasses- bright and clear like a summer sky, and for a moment, he actually thought about asking her to dance-

"Tilmitt never disappoints, does she?"

Caught off guard, Quistis jumped, splashing champagne down the front of her dress. Seifer, whose nerves were already frayed past the point of no return, fell out of his chair.

Xu smiled down at both of them, a glass of champagne clutched in her hand. She hadn't bothered to dress up for the occasion but instead wore her SeeD uniform, her short hair curling in wisps around her heart-shaped face. Xu would have been pretty, he supposed, were she not a walking, nagging succubus. "What're you doing on the floor, lapdog?"

"Looking up your skirt," he replied. "And giving myself nightmares for the next twenty years," he added under his breath.

"I should think getting skull-fucked by a sorceress would provide you enough material in that department," replied Xu nastily, before turning to Quistis. "Why is he here?"

Quistis looked from Xu to Seifer as if they were two junkyard dogs in need of a good hosing. "He needs to take the second portion of his sleep deprivation test at 2400 hours, so I thought-"

"You mean the one in the Training Center?" replied Xu. "In that case, he's got about ten minutes to grab his weapon and show up. It's nearly time."

Quistis glanced back at the clock, and paled. "Xu's right. Meet Instructor Green outside the Training Center. Sign in, and your score will be reported to me in the morning."

Seifer got on his feet, and slumped in the general direction of the Training Center.

"Good luck!" she called after him. He ignored her. The sooner he got to bed, the better. Compliments? Philosophical discussions? Almost asking Trepe to dance?

_It had been a long, strange day…and by Seifer's standards, that was saying something._


	15. The IGCS

"_My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on--_ …………………."

-Nietzche, _The_ _Will to Power,_

"Listen up! Teamwork means staying out of my way!" –Seifer

Chapter 15-The IGCS

The shine of her boots chased the hallway lights as they skimmed past like sunlight on marble waters, the clop of heel on stone echoing throughout the dark hallway.

It was early: most cadets and SeeDs alike were still in bed, getting some much needed rest before the start of another long day. After a rash of early morning drills during the week, the younger cadets were enjoying a rare, well-deserved sleep-in. The SeeDs were almost done with their monster eradications in Trabia, and were beginning their days later and later as the body counts dwindled.

It was hard to believe a month had passed, a month full of snow and training, of forcing Seifer to plow through the SeeD manual and watching as his skills improved, of watching his arms and limbs regaining grace and filling out. Occasionally she'd catch a flash of the old Seifer, the boy that had teased her endlessly as a child and taunted her from the back of her classroom years later, cat-like eyes glittering like emerald coals, glowing with a confidence she continued to envy. Other times, however, he was aloof, unreachable and stiff-backed, constantly on edge. Quistis found his moods, good or bad, were infectious, and spent as much time snapping at others as smiling at them.

The hallway's length seemed oddly distorted this morning- too short- but Quistis supposed it was because she wasn't particularly looking forward to what was on the end of it. In no time at all, she had reached the doorway of the room she was expected in.

Sighing, she walked into the brightly-lit room and sat down. A few minutes passed, and she tapped her fingers against the tissue-papered table, crossing her legs and uncrossing them in trepidation for what was to come.

It didn't matter how old she got. Quistis was fairly sure that she would never learn to like this part of being a SeeD.

"Ah, Quistis, there you are."

The young woman jumped on reflex, fingers digging into the table cushion. She quickly covered up her tension with a nervous smile as her gaze came into contact with a short, pleasant-looking woman. "Hello, Dr. Kadowaki."

Dr. Kadowaki smiled warmly at her as she tipped a small glass vial, filling a relatively small syringe with clear fluid. "How have you been?" The two had always shared a loose bond, one born out of the driven desire to succeed in previously male dominated fields. Quistis liked the doctor, at least as much as she could like anyone that stuck her with needles on a regular basis.

Quistis wet her lips, trying to look everywhere but the needlepoint. "All right. Busy. What about you, doctor?"

"Same, of course. There's been a rash of the flu lately. Have you been immunized?"

"Yes, last week."

A quick jab; a fine, silver pain in her arm as the needle stuck. The sensation quickly faded, leaving a cooling tinge running through her arm. Dr. Kadowki quickly swabbed the area with alcohol and placed a small round bandage on Quistis' skin, just above the soft mauve, satin-like leather of her gloves. Quistis relaxed the scrunched, distasteful wrinkle of her nose and gave her hand a shake.

"Have you gotten the results back from those tissue samples you sent in to the DS Research Center?" she asked, flexing her arm.

"Not yet," replied the doctor. "Another week yet, I suspect."

Quistis looked down at her arm. She'd been getting the shots since she was 16, since the day her sheets had spotted red and she'd realized with disgust that the inconvenience of womanhood had dawned upon her. Most SeeDs reached mensus late due to the stress of training- her case was not unusual. Xu had taken her to the office and Dr. Kadowki had given her a brief, obviously scripted explanation of what was happening to her body, and Garden's policy concerning temporary sterilization. Kadowaki, having now given the 'Sex and Your Body' talk to hundreds of students, did not miss a beat.

All SeeD members on active duty were to receive injections once a month, effectively rendering them temporarily sterile. Females ceased ovulation completely; males shot blanks. It was laid out in the contract, clear and solid as crystal. The shot itself showed high promise in clinical evaluations, and enjoyed high success rates at Garden.

A SeeD was an investment as much as they were a soldier- countless hours were spent in the training and sculpture of such a perfect fighting machine. To lose a SeeD to gunfire, to assassination, to war- all of these were forcibly accepted measures in a politically-minded institution. It was the consequence of their function. To lose a young, ripe SeeD to pregnancy during a soldier's prime was unacceptable, a cost the military organization could not afford to pay.

They were prized cattle, SeeDs, after all.

Zell liked to joke that soon they'd be pumped with high-octane fuel and sent through conveyor belts to shower and feed. They had all chuckled good-naturedly at the mental picture, but his analogy was not far off. Garden was a veritable hive, and in a hive, the importance of the individual was not particularly stressed. They functioned together, as a well-oiled machine, a calculated swarm trained to kill. Cid did his best to encourage personalized attention, but in such a large institution, it was difficult. It was why Quistis had enjoyed her job so thoroughly. It was her chance to smooth out the kinks, personalize herself with the other students and help them remember that they were individuals as well as soldiers. At least, it had been.

"And how is Seifer doing?" The doctor smiled. "He and Squall used to be my best customers, you know. Those two should have qualified for frequent bleeder miles."

How could she forget? She had often sent the both of them there from her class, the two boys bleeding from their lips, noses, eyelids…………She sighed at the memory.

"He passed his physical preliminaries. There's not much more I can refresh with him," she said slowly. "With luck, he'll pass this test."

_A truckload of it_, thought Quistis wryly.

Quistis held no delusions that, although his attitude had improved somewhat, Seifer had generated any sudden affinity for following orders.

Dr. Kadowaki stepped on the trashcan trigger, dropping the needle sheath into the plastic biohazard bag. The older woman chuckled, running a hand through her salt-and-peppered hair. "Always liked him. Such a nice boy, Seifer. Always so polite when he would come in."

Polite? _Plotting_ was more like it.

Quistis tugged up her glove. "Seifer Almasy has always been a wolf in wolf's clothing, Dr. Kadowaki. His charisma is nothing but a predatory extension." She paused. "A fang of charm."

"In that case," returned the older woman, elbowing her. "Ever been bitten?"

Quistis scowled, rolling her eyes as she rubbed her arm.

The doctor just chuckled as she peeled off her examination gloves, snapping them into the trashcan before releasing the pedal. "Ah, silence! So you **do** find him charming?"

"I find him barely tolerable." Replied Quistis.

Kadowaki cast a motherly glance back at Quistis, the girl she secretly coveted as a kind of distant daughter- so like her; so stubborn, so driven. "An improvement, from what I remember. What a difference a few years can make, eh? Is he growing on you?"

"Like the plague." Returned Quistis sourly, hopping down from the seat with a pronounced clop. The doctor's laughter carried behind her, and resentfully Quistis concluded that the good doctor had one too many discussions with Selphie.

She shook her head as she checked her watch, making sure she was in time for the meeting.

_Why was everyone so obsessed with her love life, anyway? Or lack of one? _

…

…

Boots caught on marble floors, rubber soles pressed and squeaked as the dim clamor of blades resounded off the hollow walls.

The chop of breath, the wind that followed in the wake of the blade filled the senses, leather and steel, sweat and the faint, coppery scent of blood.

It held in the air, glimmered harshly in the eyes of the two men that cast its graceful, darkened shadows on the walls. Feet covered, dodged, the grace of muscle lending its mortal splendor to steel. It lingered in the shadows that played upon the steel sword, on the soft grunts and gentle murmurs that the blade sang with every stroke. It lingered somewhere in the darkness of their eyes, clung deeply to their souls and shadows. The beauty of war, the ballad of blood and sweat that never failed to stir mortal blood to dance.

Cold echoes of long abandoned blades sang out, a vibration, a calling, a cult of steel and song and brotherhood. Within that steel, wrapped round the flesh of a righteous hand, was the power to change one's destiny and those around it, to change space and time within an arc of a single blade.

And so its dancers danced.

Seifer cut a wide arc to the left, spinning dramatically on his left heel and dodging the slash of his opponent's blade, retaliating with a furious sideswipe that whirred inches from the other man's ear. His opponent brought up his gunblade swiftly, halting the downward progress of Hyperion's thirsty pursuit with a sharp, arm-shaking clang. He disengaged swiftly with a blunt scrape, spinning to strike again. Again, steel met with steel. Seifer grunted and sidled back slightly, then once again was forced to heave himself heavily to the left to avoid another vicious arc. Sweat trickled between his brow, adrenaline still running fierce and potent in his veins. He noticed with some measure of annoyance that the man in front of him didn't seem to be as winded.

He met eyes briefly with his opponent, watched the flicker of artificial light on blue-gray orbs and held up Hyperion to block another front thrust. Hyperion's metal song sang through his veins with each clamor, the light of her mercurious eye a distant sparkle in every thrust. She was his again, melded to him as tightly as any bone, come home at last to the man who had left her.

It was like learning to speak, opening one's mouth and hearing the words crank out choppy like rusty gears, then slowly, surely, the silk and grace returns to the lips, the heart remembers the feel………and one can scarcely stop talking. He could scarcely stop swinging, so strange and beautiful was the joy of having his sword in his arms again.

He blocked again, then pushed hard, forcing his opponent back far enough to allow him enough leverage for an offensive. And so he charged, right, left…….the weave and bend of his feet like that of a rug spun quickly, the invisible threads weaving a battle worn quilt he had started years ago, never to finish.

He would finish it now.

Seifer lunged forward again, watching with satisfaction the back tread of his opponent, forced to shrink back against the new offensive the dip in guard had allowed him to pursue. He wound up, gathering the remaining strength in his arm for one final drive, feeling the fabric of his uniform bunch at his shoulder as he brought it down. He thrust, the graceful uppercut met by another horizontal block. The swords stayed lock, blades shaking under the force of the arms that propelled them.

A draw. A draw in a sea of losses over the last month.

He dropped his stance, stepping back, and swinging Hyperion in a few loose arcs to stretch out the still quivering muscle of his right arm.

Ordinarily, Seifer didn't believe in draws- it didn't follow his religion of the battle. One side was meant to fall, and the other side was meant to walk victorious. No true equal opposition existed. The man that stood in front of him, however, would forever remain an exception.

"You're improving."

Seifer tipped his head in acknowledgement as he brought his gaze up to regard the dark gray-blue eyes of Squall Leonhart. The young man offered him a nod in return, sheathing Lionhart at his side as Seifer secured Hyperion at his. The two men walked out together into the halls of Balamb Garden- one tall blonde-haired, gregarious, the other short and dark, reticent. Two complete opposites, two complete equals. No longer enemies, and yet, not quite friends.

Theirs would always be a relationship too marred by the past to call it friendship- but in the hours spent breathing their common air in dueling, they could find an understanding deeper than most would understand in a lifetime. The two soldiers, silent in their exchange, would transfer more in the barter of steel than most would discuss by breath in a lifetime. In the music of their blood, in the way each blade stopped just short of a mark, or the way the quick nods and short grimaces paid homage to the other's skill, they would form an unspoken trust that ran deeper than bone.

In the heart of the soldier, the trust of battle pounds thicker than blood.

…

…

…

Quistis sighed as she activated the access panel for Squall's office. His voice had woken her from her sleep that morning, cold and curt, as always.

At first, she had smacked at the bleeping comlink, thinking it was the alarm. After a brief wrestle with the cord, from which Quistis reluctantly emerged victor, she answered, still groggy.

"Quistis."

She raised her eyebrows, surprising breaking her morning haze as she pushed the hair out of her eyes. Squall rarely called. It was either important…….or important. Squall didn't make pleasure calls.

"Meeting at my office after second bell."

She blinked, a variety of unpleasant scenarios running through her head at what the possible meeting could be for.

"Quistis." The voice bordered on impatient.

"What?"

"I said, are there any schedule conflicts?"

"_No_." she replied, glaring at the phone.

_Click_.

"Ass." Quistis sighed and rolled onto her back. Although she and Squall were on speaking terms per the good of Garden, for the past month they had avoided speaking to one another in the social gatherings the group participated in. It was just as well, really, Quistis supposed. Squall was probably grateful for the reprieve in her conversation, and he'd never spoken to her much to begin with. The rest of the group either didn't notice the lack of the exchange, or chose to overlook it.

Most likely the latter.

With a sigh, she dragged herself into the shower, already starting off the morning on the wrong foot. Squall was a poor excuse for a wake-up call.

Twenty minutes later, Xu, Squall, and Headmaster Cid met her gaze, all wearing tight, serious expressions. Not a good sign. Squall and Xu stood on either side of Cid's large desk- all three ceased their discussion and looked up at her upon her entrance.

"Ah, good, Quistis, you're here." Cid nodded.

"Yes. What's the situation?" she asked instantly, eyes on Cid as she moved forward to stand in front of his desk.

Xu gestured to the computer in front of Cid's desk. "Try accessing the IGCS." The IGCS was an acronym for the Inter-Garden Communication System, a satellite-powered link that the three Gardens had set up after the Second Sorceress War that acted as the military bases' primary link of communication.

Quistis walked forward, frowning, taking a seat in front of the terminal.

**Access: 0165414, SeeD Quistis Trepe, ****Balamb****Garden**. **Request uplink.**

**ACCESS DENIED**

Quistis frowned, then typed the link again.

**ERROR 3404-PIN 0165414.** **ACCESS DENIED**.

"I don't understand." She said finally, leaning back in her chair.

"Neither do we." Replied Squall. "All three Gardens are mobile now, and for the past month, we haven't been able to reach the other two. We can't pinpoint their location, and they won't respond to direct or indirect communication links. It's almost like they've put up a firewall to keep us out."

Xu crossed her arms. "We'd expect a move like that from Galbadia, but not Trabia. Martine's been hostile since the Sorceress War, but Davin Korbeil was one of ours, and very loyal to Balamb considering our significant exchange program."

It was a testament either to the ineptitude of Galbadia's government, or its corruption, that Martine had been reinstated as Galbadia Garden's Headmaster. Quistis always assumed that Martine's reinstatement that had more to do with Martine being a convenient figurehead than a competent Headmaster- a view that was shared by many in SeeD.

Xu continued. "Assuming the communication severance is mechanically related, it doesn't make sense that all communication is down, unless our main tower is busted."

"Why haven't we noticed this before?"

Cid folded his hands. "The IGCS was more of an expensive symbol of good will between the Gardens…an icon of shared power and stability. Unfortunately, it was rarely utilized as anything other than that."

Ah, so there was more than one motivation for docking in Trabia. She had an inkling that scouts had already been deployed to check out the Trabia Garden base and determine its absence.

"What information do we have that leads us to believe this is more than a simple maintenance failure?" she asked, straightening up from the computer.

"None, yet, and with any luck, none will surface." Said Cid.

Quistis got the distinct feeling that there was something left unsaid.

"I'll check it out," said Quistis immediately.

Cid smiled proudly, his grandfatherly face breaking into a warm grin. "Ah, good, Quistis. I was hoping to have you on the expedition team. We hope, of course, that the troubles can be attributed to a technological failure, but in the event that they should be more……….politically related, I will rest easier knowing someone of your experience is present."

Quistis nodded. "Yes, sir."

Squall shut down the communication link, then turned to face Quistis. "You'll be traveling with Selphie, Xu, and Brek Garek. You have permission to take the Ragnarok."

Quistis tried not to make a face at the last name mentioned, and at the idea of having Selphie pilot the Ragnarok. Brek Garek was a mediocre SeeD, at best, and her stomach dropped at the thought of flying with her friend. The girl brought a whole new face of terror to 'crazy woman driver'. Quistis herself was not prone to airsickness, but Selphie's flying was a constant exception.

Squall continued, his face the very image of an expressionless plaster mold. "You are to ascertain the nature of the communications failure, and assume all securities and take all liberties relevant to that assignment."

In the common slang of the SeeD, it meant, "Watch your ass and blow up shit as appropriate." Quistis hid a smile at remembering Zell's way of decoding Squall's military dialect.

She looked up. "Permission requested to bring cadet Almasy."

Squall glowered. "Permission denied." Xu also looked less than pleased at the idea. Not surprising.

"You said yourself, it's routine procedure. It's no different than a protocol field trip of sorts."

Quistis smiled inwardly.

_You want me to baby-sit, Leonhart? I'll show you baby-sitting_.

She focused her attentions on Cid Kramer. "As Matron said, Cid, Seifer must be given every opportunity to improve himself."

Neither Cid nor Squall looked happy to have their words turned on them. "I take full responsibility for his actions under my command." She gave Cid a little smile. "I would think you would both be most disappointed in my performance as supervisor if I did not expose Seifer to field protocol to the very best of my ability." Cid and Squall exchanged a glance.

_You play the Edea card-- well, so can I,_ thought Quistis to herself.

Squall's glare could fairly permeate stone. "You're not in command. Xu is."

Cid nodded. "It's Xu's decision, Quistis. It's her mission." They were both counting on Xu's well-known dislike of the former sorceresses' knight to put the matter to rest.

She turned appropriately. "Xu, permission requested to bring junior classman Almasy along on said mission."

Xu's dark eyes narrowed, head cocked slightly as she regarded her long-time friend. Quistis waited for the answer- it was a gamble, she knew, and the odds were in Cid and Squall's favor now.

_Come on, Xu._

"Permission………….granted." Replied Xu curtly. She turned to Cid and Squall, both of whom did poor jobs at covering their surprise. "With permission, I'll take my leave, gentlemen. I need to obtain the appropriate clearances and supplies."

Cid nodded. "Both of you are free to go."

Quistis nodded, drinking in the heated look in Leonhart's eyes before turning to leave. She had overridden his authority; something she knew would grate on the young man's nerves for hours.

Still, it was a strangely empty victory.

Xu turned to her as soon as the doors shut, eyes guarded and a little angry. "I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, Quistis, but just make sure you've got things covered."

"I'm not trying to prove anything." Snapped Quistis. "They gave me an assignment; I'm following through with it."

Xu shook her head. "It seems to me what just happened in there was a power-override, not a professional aspiration."

Silence.

Xu continued. "I'm not going to deal with his shit on my mission. None. Got it?"

"Fine."

"You owe me for this one, you know." Said Xu, earning a nod from her friend. Xu sighed, the anger and apprehension fading as she took in her friend's tired stance. "I'll hold a mission briefing tonight one bell before restricted hours. We still on for lunch?"

Quistis checked her watch, then nodded.

Xu gave her a curt nod. "Good. It's on you. It's the least you can do to compensate for me having to deal with that sword-wielding shithead again."

She watched Xu leave, feeling dread seeping into her veins as she realized the significance of her pushing only minutes before. She now had Seifer Almasy on her team, the man who had never taken orders before, resented authority and hated Xu…………the list went on. She couldn't guarantee Seifer's cooperation, much less her ability to 'control' him.

She sighed and headed to the second level classroom, hoping she hadn't just bitten off more than she could chew for pride's simple sake.


	16. New Missions and Old Enemies

"_Seifer, you're the squad leader. Good luck to you_." (Quistis)

"_Instructor._ _I hate it when people wish me luck. Save those words for a bad student that needs it, eh?"_ (Seifer)

"_Okay then………..Good luck, Seifer_." (Quistis)

"_…add Instructor Trepe to The List."_ (Seifer)

Chapter 16-New Missions and Old Enemies

He was sitting in the desk farthest back; the same spot he'd picked in her own classroom years ago and the one he picked now, far away from the (now imaginary) students. She wondered if he knew just how alike he and Squall were- loners, soldiers set apart from others both in skill and their own personal exile.

His long legs were stretched out, folded at the ankles and his hands crossed across his stomach as he gazed out at the sun on the snow, the bullion hues taking up residence in his short hair and glimmering like spun gold. His eyes were narrowed in thought, soft lips drawn in a somber line as the light green irises flickered across the snow banks, eyes on the window but his mind clearly somewhere else.

Surely he knew he was beautiful, the same way a leopard knows it can run, the knowledge of its speed and grace an afterthought in its tread. Seifer's was an innate conceit, had always been- one he pressed as an advantage rather than obsessed over himself. Even now, after his ambition had dulled somewhat and a cold calm seemed to have settled over his eyes, he still radiated that distant fire, that same confidence that drew so many in and, simultaneously, kept so many back. She had often wondered at the strength of that assuredness…if it would crumble, a castle diminished to sand by the right wave.

She plucked herself from the doorway, making her presence known. He did not turn away from the window, but instead acknowledged her with a slight tilt of his head. "Trepe."

"Did you have any questions on the chapter about diplomatic protocol?" she asked, setting down her materials on the front desk, including her own dog-eared copy of the SeeD protocol manual.

Seifer shrugged. "Kissing ass and faking it- what's not to understand?" He grinned at her expression. "Whatever, you know I'm right."

"Seifer-" she didn't bother to finish her sentence. He was right-that was _exactly_ what it was.

She stifled a smile and sat down on the desk next to him. "We're going on a mission tomorrow."

He raised an eyebrow, folding his arms behind his back. "_We_?"

She nodded. "B. Garden has lost contact with Trabia Garden and Galbadia Garden for the past few weeks. All attempts to set up communication have failed, which in all likelihood means our common communication base is malfunctioning. You, me, Selphie, Xu-"

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Oh great. _Xu_."

Quistis glared at him and continued. "We're going to take the Ragnarok to the station. It's just south of Esthar."

"And why the hell am **I** going?"

"It'll be a good experience for you. You can see SeeD protocol in action and-"

"I've seen it plenty of times." His eyes remained heavenward.

_Been on the wrong end of it plenty of times, is more like it,_ he thought.

"Ugh!" Quistis threw up her arms. "I don't care what you think! You're going!"

"Then why'd you bother telling me? Why not just grab me by the collar and drag me along, like a good dog?"

Quistis prayed to Hyne for patience. Patience, and the restraint to avoid grabbing the lapels of his tattered gray coat and shaking the living daylights him.

"Well, at any rate, we're meeting at the second bell before curfew to discuss the mission plans. Just be there, and _try_ to behave yourself."

"Instructor, I'm hurt." He said, feigning distress with a pouting frown that wrinkled his scar. "I'm always on my best behavior."

The young blonde just rolled her eyes, fisting her hands on her hips and giving him a glare that fell flat immediately in light of his unapologetic grin. Sighing, she gathered her SeeD manual and her other papers into her arms.

"I have a lunch date with Xu. Do you have any questions before I leave?" she asked, making her way to the door.

"You must be hard up for lunch dates, Instructor." He remarked wryly.

"I'll see you this evening, Seifer," she mumbled, turning to leave. "And stop calling me Instructor."

"Why didn't reapply for your license?" he asked quietly as he gazed out the window once more, so quietly she almost didn't catch it.

She stopped, frozen, body tensed at the mention of her so desperately desired past.

She turned. "That's hardly pertinent to-"

"Why can't you just answer the question?" he returned evenly, frowning. "You've asked me about a thousand these past couple weeks, and I can't ask you one?"

She sighed. "It isn't important."

"Sure it is." he said, turning to face her. "It's important to you."

Since when was what was important to _her_ matter to **him**?

"It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter." She looked away.

He sighed and looked back at the window. "Doesn't make sense to me. That's what you wanted, right?" he said, pushing off his knees as he got to his feet and walking towards her. "You wanted to stand up in front of people and have them listen to you, notice you." He was close now, she could smell the sweat and soap that radiated off of his collarbone, could feel the warmth that exuded from his skin. "And so did I."

 "Maybe you and I aren't so different, Instructor." He said softly, looking so deeply into her eyes she would swear he could see the back of skull and all the irrational thoughts that were currently swimming around there. In the next instant, he was gone, the door sliding shut behind him.

"Maybe not." she muttered.

…

…

…

"IDIOT." Insisted Fujin, jabbing her thumb at Rajin as she dug her chopsticks into the sweet and sour chicken in front of her.

Seifer chuckled, digging into his own stir fry. Rajin and Fujin had showed up at his door an hour ago, bearing lukewarm take-out. (From Hyne knew where in Trabia, but at any rate, Seifer was grateful for the change in diet. He was also grateful for the chance to relax with his friends.

It was an improvement from the last time they had come to his dwelling, bearing food. He actually ate it, this time, and Rajin's nose was still intact.

For the time being, anyway.

Seifer was surprised to realize just how much he had missed his friends. They'd been a trio since their respective admissions to Garden, inseparable from the first day of class. They'd pulled pranks together (filling Nida's office with dead fish ranked up there with the best pranks in Posse history), struggled through the SeeD tests together, (although Fuj and Raj had actually made it), and Fujin and Rajin had actually followed him awhile, during the Sorceress War, until common sense had dictated they stop.

_Standing there, rage burning in his chest as he saw Fujin and Rajin over on Squall's side, back with the **sheep**, and how, in that moment, he wanted to kill them **all**…._

Seifer looked up, trying to snap out of remembering. It was a tricky art, needling between past and present, caught between nightmares and nostalgia.

"LOST." Fujin accused again. "FOOD COLD."

"Hey!" Rajin put up his hands in self defense. "Everywhere in Trabia is miles away from everywhere else, ya know!"

Seifer chewed. "That makes no sense, Rajin."

"LOST." Asserted Fujin knowingly.

"Hey! I didn't get us lost! We were…._delayed_, ya know! All those roads look the same!"

"LOST." Insisted Fujin, taking another bite. Fujin was seated next to him on the bed, and Rajin was reclining in the only other chair in the room, legs propped up on the desk. He shot Fujin a half-hearted dirty look. "The signs were covered up with snow, ya know!" Fujin just shook her head and suppressed a smile.

They made a perfect couple. One was as stoic as stone and the other wouldn't shut up.

Rajin glanced over at Seifer. The bigger, dark-skinned man had given up with the chopsticks and was now shoveling the noodles with his fingers, much to Fujin's displeasure. "Hey man, me and Fuj're gonna go check out one of the smaller villages again tomorrow. You wanna come?"

"Can't, man." Replied Seifer, finishing the last of his broccoli and rice. It was pretty good. Not as good as old Man Chu's place back in Balamb, but it was an improvement from the half-frozen rations all of Balamb Garden had been forced to subsist on for the last few weeks.

"PIG." Fujin informed her greasy-handed boyfriend. "MISSION?" she inquired, turning back to Seifer.

"Yeah. Quistis wants me to come along on this thing. We're gonna check out some broken communications tower around Esthar."

Fujin looked interested. "IGCS?"

"Yeah. The communication between the three Gardens has been down awhile, I guess. They think it's a mechanical failure or something." Replied Seifer, glancing at his clock. "Hey guys, thanks for the food, but I gotta get going. There's a mission briefing in a few minutes."

Fujin tossed him a small folded cookie as she got up to leave. "FORTUNE." She gave him a wave as she left.

"You've been spendin' an awful lot of time with Quistis lately, ya know." Said Rajin, grinning. "Somethin' goin' on?"

Seifer awarded him a frown, wondering just how many paint chips Rajin had been allowed to consume as a child. Him and Quistis? Ha. That was the funniest thing he'd heard all year. And by funny he meant unlikely and damned weird.

"Rajin, you're not gonna win any fucking detective awards." He replied, tossing his cookie wrapper in the garbage. "She's assigned to me and I'm stuck with her. End of story."

Rajin put up his meaty hands defensively as he ducked out the door. "Hey ya know, nothing wrong with that. She's pretty hot, ya know. Wouldn't mind learning in her classroom again, ya know."

"RAGE." Came the voice from the hall.

"Ow! Not as hot as you, Fuj! Geez!"

Seifer smiled at his friends' antics as he broke open the cookie, stifling a yawn. He read the fortune, just for the hell of it.

_Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length_.

He crumpled up the paper and tossed the thing across the room. Fucking cryptic cookies.

_…_

_…_

_…_

_.._

_.._

_.._

_The beach drew the children like moths to an open flame, their tiny forms pale streaks in the sand as they bee-lined to the shore. Zell and __Irvine__ tore into the water right away, tiny bodies disappearing into the surf with shout-filled splashes. Selphie stayed at the shore and played tag with the surf, shrieking as the water rose up to bite at her toes._

_Zell, meanwhile, barreled at the tanned form of Irvine, grabbing his friend's neck and giving him an effective dunking. The good-natured boy surfaced, sputtering, coffee-colored eyes narrowing in child-like delight as he dove beneath the surf and dragged a yelling Zell with him. Soon enough, however, the two grew tired of rubbing sand in each other's faces and dragged a screaming Selphie into the surf instead._

_Ellone_ _walked along the shore, smiling like the sun as she skipped along the tide, accompanied by her ever-watchful shadow, a sullen, dark-haired, blue-eyed boy who dragged a stick in the sand behind him._

_Matron smiled and shaded her eyes from her vantage point on a pink beach blanket, the long straw hat sloping over the front of her beautiful face as she watched her children play in the sun. _

_One girl sat apart from the group, a few feet away from all the splashing and shrieking, glancing up occasionally. Quistis watched the group with eyes as tumultuous as the ocean. She dug her arms into the sand, lifting up heaping mounds of the wet clumps perfect for castle-making. Meticulously, she stamped the granules into towers, carved coral-enforced tunnels and drew up walls with water-smoothed sticks, all singing some off-key, obviously made up rhyme about something he couldn't make out. Spiral shells served as tower caps, and bridges were reinforced by strips of seaweed. She was constantly distracted by rogue sand crabs that wouldn't be deterred by stick pokes and small, brightly colored crayfish that refused to be loyal subjects._

_He watched them from a sand dune crest, watched their smiles and their laughter. He spent a lot of time watching them, enjoying his anonymity. Mostly, he watched her build the sandcastle, thinking of what fun it was going to be to tear it down. Oh, she would cry, most likely, then try to bean him in the head with a stick, as was usually her next course of action (although depending on the situation, any blunt object would do). Quistis had learned long ago that telling on him only resulted in Matron's time-outs, which were too nonviolent for the little girl's more sadistic tastes and really more of an inconvenience for him than a punishment. Time-outs simply allowed him more time for scheming, and Quistis knew it._

When she'd left the orphanage, he'd thought that she was gone forever, the annoying and somewhat enigmatic vision of his childhood. He'd hated her for leaving, missed her clinginess and even, on desperate days, her bossiness. She was the only one who bothered to stand up to him most of the time, who wasn't scared of his bullying and who tried to boss with him with equal fervor. He hadn't liked her, really, had fought with her more than he'd played with her…but she was a part of their group, a part of his childhood that had been almost happy. After Quistis left, he'd devoted his new free-time to torturing Chicken Zell and trying to start fights with Leonhart, with varying success. He thought of her now and then, wondered if her new family was all sugar cookies and walks in the park as she'd obviously thought it would be. Beneath all that seriousness, she really was an idiot about that sort of thing.

When he reached Garden, she was a SeeD already, the youngest ever admitted and quite a popular and respected figure amongst her peers. She had been using GF's since her admission, and when she looked at him, there was no longer any gleam of recognition in her eyes, just the passing glance of a stranger in a crowd. No warmth, no mischief.

Only ice.

Not the challenge, not the spark he so distantly remembered, her desperate and stupid need for affection and belonging…her need to be **needed**. There was nothing left in her but determination, determination and the cold, battered detachment of a junkyard dog- an overconfident but wounded slink that was half insecurity and half stubborn pride.

_The hell happened to you, Quistis_?

"Goodness, Seifer. You're making early a habit."

He jumped at the voice behind him, carefully arranging his surprise into a sneer. "Quistis. You're getting worse at sneaking up on people."

She chuckled as she took a seat next to him at the large table that made up the conference room. "I'll have to remember that when considering a career in professional sneakiness," she replied.

He noticed a pack of cards sitting atop her constant pile of paperwork. "Triple Triad? You play?"

She shrugged. "Hmmm…You might say I dabble," she replied, mysteriously.

Hyne. She was as cryptic as the fucking fortune cookie.

"Sorry I'm late!" exclaimed Selphie, darting in and plopping down in one of the black leather chairs. "Hope I didn't interrupt anything!"

She received two frowns from across the table, albeit one slightly more confused than the other.

Xu walked in next, the sound of her walk giving her away. If it was possible, even the clop of Xu's boots sounded serious. A young man followed close behind her, dark hair cropped short, high cheekbones and slanted dark eyes reminding Seifer of an oiled weasel.

Seifer stood as the two entered the room, his own emerald gaze narrowed dangerously in recognition of the young man behind Xu.

He remembered Brek Garek, and from the look in his eyes, Brek Garek remembered him, too.

The two men stared at one another, fists and jaws clenched.

"And just what the _fuck_ is he doing here?" asked Brek, his voice the high and annoying pitch of a mosquito army in Seifer's ears.

"Seifer is here under my orders, and will remain." Quistis cast him an even look, a cool and level gaze that dared him to challenge her authority.

Seifer hid a smirk. He had seen that look plenty of times in the detention room………in the hallways……..in the classrooms……in the cafeteria…it was damned annoying to be stared down by someone who was only two months older than he was.

It was somehow gratifying to see that look leveled at someone else for a change.

The tension on the room was not lost on the dark-haired young woman who stood in the center of it. She glared. "Assuming, and I do believe correctly, that everyone is acquainted with one another, let's discuss the mission, shall we?"

The rest of the group nodded agreement and took their seats, the leather cushions echoing in a collective groan as the five leaned on the glossy tabletop.

Xu sat at the head of the table, folding her hands, dark eyes glittering as the light dimmed. This was what Xu loved. The chase, the pursuit, the kill- Xu was a soldier first and a human secondly in many ways.

"Now, tomorrow morning at first call, we're leaving south to approximately three degrees north latitude of Esthar." The transparency behind her, a blue screen with a detailed map of the continents suddenly flickered, emitting a flickering red beep at the precise coordinates.

"The trip should take no more than three hours aboard the Ragnarok, upon which time we will deploy directly to the tower through the small city that surrounds it. The city itself is called Tromedia, population 874." Xu pressed a small button on the small black remote in her hands, and a small, quaint looking town came into view, complete with cobblestone streets. Wires and cables sprung up behind the old city, looking blatantly out of place. Quistis was familiar with the Blueboard Xu was using for the mission briefing- she had used it often herself in her own classroom.

My _old_ classroom, she corrected, trying to turn her attention back to Xu.

Xu pointed at a tall tower that connected the spider web-like cables far back from the town. "The IGCS."

The screen flickered. "The station itself was built to be fully self-sufficient, but human maintenance was assigned as a precaution." A tall, wired structure came into view, high enough to dwarf everything else within a ten mile radius. Xu clicked her remote once more, and the screen dimmed as the lights returned.

"We will ascertain the difficulties with the station by whatever means necessary. We have permission to operate Iron Hand." Iron hand was Garden's slang term for a full-scale military operation, through which all military and political restrictions normally inherent in policy became non-existent. Zell called it the 'balls-out-action-plan'.

"Excuse me, but if this is a 'routine' operation, why the Iron Hand a possible modus operandi?" asked Brek, leaning back in his chair. "Sounds to me as if the maintenance men are simply slacking."

Quistis glanced at him. "The IGCS is hardly a loose 'gear pin' in our communications system, Brek." She replied. "The ops team assigned that maintenance were the very best technicians each Garden had to contribute. If they aren't doing their job, there's a reason for it, whether local, political, or mechanical. At any rate, each Garden should have been notified of the failure when the system first faulted."

"We're hoping it's a local situation," replied Xu. "But it would be foolish to rule out a possible……….._political_ motivation."

Seifer leaned back. "I guess it's safe to say I've been out of the loop for awhile. Exactly _what_ political motivations are we talking about?"

Xu raised an eyebrow, surprised. The Seifer Almasy that she remembered would not have asked about the political implications of an action. He simply would have grabbed a sword and carved something up with it. _Had_ he changed as much as Quistis seemed to think?

_Doubtful_.

Xu leaned forward. "When the war ended, Headmaster Martine was reinstated, all with a lot of political strings attached to him. Cid publicly opposed the reinstatement, partially because of Martine's blatant anti-Sorceress policy and the somewhat inconvenient fact that we happen to be harboring Rinoa and Edea. Despite Cid's protests, Martine had a lot of political support and money backing him, even after the war. Because of this, it was difficult for Trabia and Balamb to refuse the reinstatement, despite Martine's military history during the war. Even though Balamb Garden is essentially fiscally independent, it has always been Cid's nature to wish for the state of political peace, which is why Cid demands that B. Garden neither accepts nor promotes any particular political agenda- why we are simply a contract military establishment. It allows our objectivity. So, Cid was forced to withdraw his objection, in the end."

Seifer nodded his understanding. The only thing worse than politics was military politics: it treated both civilians and soldiers like commodities: tradable masses in the interest of over-stuffed shirts.

Quistis continued. "We allowed Martine's reinstatement, but tensions still exist between the three Gardens to this day, with Trabia caught in the middle. Martine represents a lot of old money and backwash politics, most of which would serve to gain a lot of military power and monetary benefit if Balamb were wiped out. Cid believes that Martine is just biding his time until a new option becomes available for him, one that can create a military monopoly."

"That's ridiculous." Snapped Brek, earning him the attention of the other four people in the room. "Martine might have been a decent enough figurehead, but he hasn't got anything in the way of military initiative. Do you really think that any Garden, with as much press as it's got every time it so much as moves, has got any first strike capacity, politically speaking?"

Quistis glared at Brek out of the corner of her eye. "It's foolish to assume either way. Which is why we're inspecting the tower as neutral ambassadors from B.Garden." Brek had all but volunteered himself for this mission, and yet, he seemed dead-set against it. Then again, Brek had never had a lot of military initiative himself. He had passed his SeeD entrance exam just barely, having taken a lot of point subtractions for lack of procedural inventiveness and outright laziness. No, she was not looking forward to having Brek on her team.

Selphie frowned. "So what if Galbadia **does** have something to do with the IGCS failure?"

Xu leveled her gaze at the four in front of her. "Iron Fist."

The rest of the group nodded in unison.

Xu straightened up. "Good. You have clearance to acquire all necessary ammunition and spells, Class A. I highly suggest, in preparation, equipping full-life and junctioning a GF. Also, make sure you pack an overnight bag, as most likely it will be a two-day mission. Questions?"

The room was silent.

"Good. Go get some rest, and meet in the Quad tomorrow at the requested time. You are free to go and make all necessary arrangements."

Chairs scraped as the group rose to leave. Seifer cast another dirty look at Brek before the young man slipped out the door.

Iron Fist? This **was** serious, thought Quistis. More serious than even Cid was letting on. She got to her feet, mentally going over the details that the upcoming mission would demand. She followed behind Brek, ignoring his whiny complaints about making mountains out of political molehills.

Seifer, meanwhile, stared at the wall, half-wondering what to make of the fact that he was going on a mission tomorrow and half wondering if he had any clean clothes to pack.

Xu turned. "I'll be watching you, Almasy. Don't fuck up."

He sneered at her, leaning back in the leather chair and gazing up at her with no small amount of scorn. "Thanks for the pep talk, mission leader."

The young woman in front of him replied with a dark scowl. "Look, Almasy, you might have fooled Quistis, but I'm not nearly so kind-hearted."

Seifer regarded her with and equal mix of scorn and old contempt. "News to me. I wasn't even aware you **had** a heart."

Xu smiled, a feral grin that made her look like a mean alley cat. "Just show up and shut up, **lapdog**."

Seifer mimicked her under his breath, his annoyance at her presence fading like the now distance clop of her boots. He didn't hate Xu, exactly- the two would simply never be friends or mutual kidney donors. In his eyes, anyway. Xu's feelings probably differed. In fact, some of the looks Xu gave him belied the young woman's desire to rip his kidneys **out**.

Seifer leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes, letting old memories flicker behind the lids.

Xu was simply annoying. He **hated** Brek Garek.

_Brek__ Garek was pretty and privileged, the sleekly bred son of Galbadia politics and old money. Like any pedigreed pretty boy, Brek was convinced of his intelligence, and power-drunk off daddy's money like it was expensive gin. _

_He turned up his nose at gunblades, saying they were 'far too barbaric', a caveman's hacking tool in modern war. Seifer had often imagined what it would be like to knock each one of his flat white teeth down his throat with the handle of that very same blade._ _Good old-fashioned violence. The perpetual equalizer between the classes. _

_He'd watched with muted distain years ago as Brek sniffed around Quistis, something like raw hate burning in the back of his throat. He'd watched as Brek offered to carry her books to class, watched as he left flowers at her door, thick bouquets with long stems and sparks of baby's breath, watching as she ate it up like the pathetic little girl she was. Brek pursued her, because of _**what** _she was, not **who**._

_Untouchable._

_Quistis was beautiful, impervious, and unreachable; the perfect trophy toy of any cadet. She stood up at the front of the classroom, her posture pencil straight and her librarian glasses perched on her nose, and every one of her male students (and some female) had at one point during her lessons wondered what it might be like to fuck her. Seifer was no different- he had spent a class or two wondering what it would be like to bend her over her desk and shatter her composure- to break the Ice Queen. It was a desire not born out of affection, but rather, possession._

_Brek__, like any spoiled child, wanted only the finest and untouched for his collection. _

_  
Quistis' virginity was a locker room lottery pot, although Seifer knew Quistis herself was unaware of the attention. Quistis seemed ignorant (purposely or no) of male eyes; her own were usually behind the pages of some boring ass book, tucked behind thick-rimmed glasses and discipline. She was far too busy to pay homage to the small collection of adolescent boys that panted after her, tongues hanging out like mongrels. Although she didn't seem to mind the attention, she also didn't seem to know what to do with it._

_Seifer had to chuckle at the Trepies. They had no fucking clue that the seemingly innocent, aloof little kitten they chased had the claws of a tigress and a stubborn streak a mile wide. They couldn't handle her, couldn't possibly appreciate her. Especially not Brek Garek. He was an aspiring lion tamer with kid gloves, for shit's sake. She'd eat him alive. _

_And here he sat in the locker room the days' sparring matches, rattling off his loud mouth about his little 'date' with Quistis Trepe. _

_Seifer had peeled off his shirt, listening intently. It wasn't that he gave a shit about Quistis. He was just curious about that deadlocked chastity belt of hers. He'd hoped, however, a more clever man would be allowed to fumble for the key._

_  
Daris, a scrawny little red-head and, Seifer suspected, a man doomed a life of chronic masturbation, nudged Brek, eyes wide and glossy for details. Details he could use for his own mental porn later, no doubt, thought Seifer with some disgust. _

"_Hey man," said Daris eagerly, wetting his lips. "How'd your little 'study date' with Trepe go?" _

_Brek__ just shook his head, a sour look marring his pretty features. "The bitch is crazy, I'm telling you. I kissed her, started to take things a little further, and she told me to get the hell out. Threw my fucking books at me." _

_Seifer chuckled and shrugged into a clean t-shirt. _

_Brek__ shot him a dirty look, but was wise enough not to open his mouth. Seifer was stronger than most of the other cadets (and about ten times as hot-headed), and even an idiot like Brek could appreciate his disadvantage._

"_You mean, you think she's still a virgin?" Daris wet his lips again, and Seifer resisted the urge to shove his wormy little tongue down his throat._

"_No doubt."_ _Brek__ chuckled. "I thought she was gonna cry or something. She really is a fucking Ice Queen."_

_  
"Too bad," Daris said, chuckling. "She's a pretty fucking _**_hot_** _little piece, man." _

_Brek__ let out a bitter little chuckle as he shoved his rifle into the locker. "Yeah, Trepe's pretty all right. Pretty fucked up." _

_Seifer's fist, after spontaneously growing a mind of its own, came around with a flash force. His knuckles tore into the soft cartilage of Brek's aristocratic little nose, a sick, wet crunch as it splintered. Brek clutched his nose and let out a muffled groan as blood squeezed through his fingers, ricocheting off the locker door. But Seifer's rage was just beginning. _

_Daris_ _gave a pathetic little bleat and tried, pathetically, to pry Seifer off his lord and master, but was rewarded by a swift upper cut that sent him sprawling against the sinks and scrambling to get out of the way._

_Brek__ hollered, trying to get in a kidney shot, but Seifer had seen him fight before and his moves were as predictable as his mouth. Brek followed the SeeD manual to a 'T'-useful against civilians and soldiers that followed the same cookie-cutter maneuvers, but useless against someone like Seifer, who incorporated a mixture of bar-room-brawling and ruthless street fighting into his fighting style._

_ Seifer dodged the first punch with easy grace and slammed him hard against the locker, grabbing Brek's neck as he held him out at arm's length. Brek got in a quick punch to his left cheek, but the sting was mild. Evidently they didn't teach punching at the Pretty_ _Boy_ _Academy._

_The other young men around them scattered or stood back and watched, not wanting to be caught in the sideswipe of the newly formed clash. When Seifer Almasy started a fight, it was better to get out of the way._

_The locker room was silent, all eyes trained on the rebel and the rich boy._

"_You son of a bitch-" Began Brek, his pretty little nose gushing blood like a water pump._

_Seifer smiled. And squeezed. Brek's eyes bulged out as his fists slammed harmlessly against Seifer's arm, gurgling as he gasped desperately for air. _

_All Brek's privilege……..all his horribly misplaced assuredness and cocky demeanor, all gone._ _Seifer could feel it pounding into his fingers, squeezing with every useless beat of the young man's heart……becoming _**his**…

_  
Rajin's hand clamped down lightly on his shoulder, the only one besides Fujin that dared to approach him when he was like this. "Seifer, whatcha doin', ya know?" _

_He didn't reply, only tightened his grip, never breaking eye-contact with the terrified young cadet before him. _

"_Hey Seifer, man._ _Let'm__ go, ya know." Rajin's voice again, persistent, scared. "He's not worth it, man." _

_Seifer's eyes narrowed as he looked at Brek, who looked about ready to piss in his pants. The urge to kill him was draining out, quickly replaced by disgust. _

_They all disappointed him. Fucking maggots._

_He leaned forward, his voice a dull, ragged hiss. "I hear you open your fucking mouth around me again, and I'll knock your teeth down your throat." He released his hand, and Brek crumpled into a moaning, gasping heap, blood from all over the young man's shirt dripping onto the floor. "You tell anybody about this, and all of daddy's money won't be enough to put your face back together. Understand?"_

_He wasn't going to look very pretty with a broken nose, thought Seifer to himself, chuckling as he pulled on his vest and watched Brek scramble out the doors, his hand over his nose._

_  
"What the hell was that, ya know?" Rajin, looking incredulous, as only a semi-gentle oaf can. _

_Seifer shrugged. "I just fucking hate that kid, that's all." He muttered, slamming the locker door behind him. _

_Rajin__ had shaken his head at him, but said nothing. _

_Wisely._

Seifer shook his head, heading towards the equipment room to pick up a duffel bag and the rest of the needed supplies. To this day, he wasn't exactly sure why he had given Brek the beating of his life.

But he was pretty sure he'd enjoy doing it again.

…

…

…

The hall was silent when he finally returned to his dorm, an array of alpha-level assault and support mags equipped and buzzing in his veins. He had declined a GF- he didn't need any more ghosts mucking around in his head.

The woman, thankfully not the last girl he had encountered, had looked up his name on the computer and promptly handed him a set of black pants, boots, shirt, and a long black trench coat with a flared tail. Xu must have commissioned special outfits. It figured that a woman who was that anal about everything else would plan right down to the last detail. He shuffled through the pile- apparently he got to select his own underwear.

He walked in the pitch dark room, stumbling on a large object in the center of the room. Swearing, he whirled. The room was quiet, the shadows illuminating the box Quistis had brought him weeks ago. He hadn't had the energy or the heart to go through it yet.

Hell, might as well get it over with now.

He ruffled through the box for quite some time, sitting on the floor in a pair of black sweat pants and carefully, he unloaded the cardboard cube. Old posters of gunblade models were carefully rolled and bound with rubber bands…a few notebooks were also placed neatly at the bottom, mostly filled with sketches of stick figures he'd drawn to amuse himself as Trepe dribbled on about GF's and Garden operatives. A couple Girl Next Door magazines were stacked beneath them, followed by a few issues of Weapons Monthly. It weirded him out that Trepe had seen his limited 'porn' collection, but he chuckled when he realized Trepe had probably been more embarrassed by it than he had. He'd had precious few possessions. The here and now had never been particularly important to him…it was always the future, the things he was _going_ to do, _going_ to be when he got out of this hellhole-

Only to end up in a hellhole worse than anything his life had ever been before. In Garden, his pride had been constantly wounded. Ultimecia…she'd ripped things out of him he didn't even know he _had_.

He was nearing the bottom of the box, where a few pictures and gunblade cloths and oil was scattered. He reached in again, looking to see what he'd pulled up. A picture of he and Rinoa, taken for them by a tourist during the summer. They were standing by the water near a bridge, his arms possessively wound around her, her hands reaching up to curl around his neck. She wore a plain coral skirt and blouse, her hair unbound, as always, smiling for all she was worth. Crumpling the picture, Seifer tossed it into the wastebasket without much of a second thought.

There was no room for _might-have-been_…hell, there was barely any room in his life for _maybe_ these days.

He tried to imagine Trepe going around his room, gently wrapping and placing his things in the box, careful not to break anything. He couldn't grasp it. In spite of everything that had happened….everything he had done…done to her, hell, done to the world, he was still alive, and she was helping him, persisting after him when she should have given up on him the minute he walked into her classroom.

The woman made no sense.

He tucked the roll of cash under the mattress, then turned back to lift up the sweater that Matron had given him when before he'd arrived at Garden. He draped that across a chair, then stooped to lift up a small, cracked photograph about the size of his palm from the bottom. The woman in it was frail-looking, ivory skin and a small, gentle smile hinting at her lips. Light, almost white blonde hair scooped along her collarbone, curling in wisps on top of her red sweater that was about three sizes too big for her…a man's sweater. She was poised in the garden, a pair of short cut-off's hugging her thighs as she squatted amongst a group of daffodils. She was holding a spade in her hand…in fact, seemed to be threatening the picture-taker with it, pointing it towards the camera with a mischievous glint in her eye.

That too, was tucked underneath the mattress. The picture was as almost as valuable as gold- in fact, he'd nearly lost his life over it, once.

He swept his hand across the bottom of the box, hoping but not hoping too hard that there was something left. The sentiment was going to be crushing, regardless, so he supposed it didn't matter either way. Just as he was about to give up, there, finally, his fingers brushed against something cool and smooth. Grasping it, he lifted a small golden circlet from the bottom, holding it up to the light. It was a gold band, a tiny circle that didn't fit his smallest finger. His mother's name was engraved on the inside: A. Almasy, and the stamp of 14k next to it. Not an expensive ring, but one that must have cost his father quite a few paychecks to purchase. He tried to imagine his father being blissful, excited, drawing out a sweaty wad of cash at the jewelry store to slip the metal band onto her finger, happy and in love. The image eluded him.

Wrapping it in a gunblade cloth, he tucked it into the leather sheath of his gunblade case in the small pocket reserved for ammo. He slipped into bed, only to stare at the ceiling once again, the ghosts of that simple circlet sitting on his chest like demons in the dark.

…

…

…

…

Morning found Quistis, Seifer and Brek huddled in their SeeD issued trench coats- black ensembles with their soldier badges sewn onto the right arm. They stood in front of the Ragnarok in the snow-covered launching docks, which had been opened overnight to allow the early mission to begin before official operating hours.

Seifer's coat was entirely too small in the shoulders, causing him to constantly hunch to avoid ripping the fabric. All wore gloves: Seifer had fished his own black dragonhide gloves from the box Quistis had given him, his spare set.

Soft leather against his fingertips sparked a sharp sensation of memory, both sweet and painful. He wondered, vaguely, as he slipped the other glove on his hand, if everything would be that way, all simple joys constantly laced with stale sorrows.

He wondered if he could stand a life like that forever.

Quistis checked her watch, adjusting the grip on her bag. The two men around her stood as far apart as possible, both avoiding the other's gaze. Seifer had pulled up the collar of the black trench coat and was currently burrowed like some hybrid of man and cranky prairie dog. Brek was sourly glaring off into the distance, his mouth cover pulled up over his nose. Neither apparently wanted to deal with the other, which frankly was just fine with Quistis. She was in no mood to be breaking up fights this morning. She wondered briefly at their history, then eventually gave up.

Seifer seemed to have a little bit of history with everyone, anyway.

Though morning, the sky was still studded with stars, the clear Trabian air allowing an array of speckled lights to be seen scattered like diamond dust across the sky. Their breath escaped in pale clouds into the cold air. Bundling tighter against the frigid wind, Quistis shifted her weight and stared up at the stars.

"Goooooood morning everyone!" came a happy chirp. The three frozen bodies turned, eyes cut in annoyance at the cheer and alertness inherent in their teammate's exclamation. Selphie was wearing the same dark standard-issue trenchcoat, black mittens, and a dark beret was tipped up to reveal sparkling green eyes and brown curls as perky as their owner. She fairly skipped up to the group, dropping her duffel bag with an enthusiastic thud. "I'd like you to welcome you aboard the Ragnarok!" She gestured like a showgirl in a prize gallery. "This four ton military fighter not only is equipped with plasma missiles, it packs a mean sonic punch! Your pilot and resident technician," she winked. "Mwa, highly recommends a seatbelt!"

_And some Dramamine_, thought Quistis sourly. Her eyes canted inquisitively. "Just how many cups of coffee have you **had**, Selphie?"

The sweet-tempered brunette tilted her hand, stroking her chin with a thoughtful mitten. "Ummmm…none. Why?"

Seifer rolled his eyes heavenward. "Hyne, just shoot me now."

"All right. Are we ready to go?" the four turned to regard Xu, who was dressed similarly. Ragnarok's hatch opened, and Xu lost no time in climbing aboard.

Quistis paused on the ramp and turned to meet Seifer's gaze. "Ready?" she asked.

He shrugged, and climbed on behind her.

_As I'll ever be._


	17. The Journey Begins

"Adventure is just a nine-letter word for disaster." -Nova, (a character from an original fic of mine).

_"Rescue me_

_From this black hole_

_That sucked me in_

_And left me dying_

_You're the truth_

_That I've been seeking_

_'Cause my whole life,_

_I've been lying"  
_  
-Only You, by Stabbing Westward

Chapter 17- The Journey Begins

Seifer stared out the window, pressing his hand to the side as the plane took a violent lurch to the right. Quistis apparently, had been right about Selphie's enthusiastic flying.

He'd never been on the Ragnarok before- Quistis had briefly entertained him with a story on how they'd 'borrowed' the thing during the Sorceress War. It was actually a craft capable of swimming in the stars, and had, she'd said.

He'd shrugged. Not a bad plane, if one liked planes. He wasn't afraid of heights, but he had never exactly relished the feeling of his stomach in his throat. And with Selphie's piloting skills, that seemed a constant.

Xu sat ahead of them, apparently unbothered by the erratic flight and filling out some inventory paperwork for the upcoming mission on a small laptop. That woman was a fucking machine. Seifer had never had the patience or the inclination for technology- too cold, and only faintly predictable. Yep. Xu in a nutshell, which would probably explain their somewhat unloving relationship.

Brek was polishing his rifle, which looked to be an upgraded version of a Bismarck, complete with gold plated handle. Seifer had to roll his eyes at that. Only an idiot upgraded his weapon for aesthetic purposes. But then, Brek seemed to be as aesthetically idiotic as humanly possible- all pretty and no brain. Still, if Brek had managed to pass the SeeD exam, and he hadn't, well, what did that make _him_?

Seifer glared at the golden sheen on the weapon's handle. That gold plating was just going to make things worse if anyone cast a Thunder spell on him while he was holding the stupid thing. Seifer thought absently back to the Thundaga spells he'd equipped last night...entertaining a wicked thought or two of frying Brek like a pretty-boy-cabob.

In reality, he was fairly uneasy about much of the magic he'd equipped. He was used to basic and advanced Fire and Ice magic, since he'd had to use much of it under his service to Edea (and had gotten hit with it a lot, subsequently), but advanced bolt-type magic and larger spells, like Meteor, he'd almost never cast. He remembered all too well in his early years as a student, trying to junction advanced magic. He'd nearly fried his veins. Hopefully this time around, his cells had built up enough resistance to the magic to avoid the twitch that most novice users experienced after heavy casting. Or the burns.

The veteran SeeD was a creature only half-human, at best; their cells had been so ravaged and radiated by magic over the years that the build-up nearly poisoned the body. Inside, a SeeD was nothing but a mass of scar tissue and radiated organs. It was a type of magical cancer, a strange arthritis that stiffened the joints and lay heavy in the eyes, a strange, eerie blue glow that lurked behind the pupils. The mark of a soldier. The chill of a trained killer.

The price one paid for glory, he supposed.

Seifer sighed and bored his skull into the padded headrest. This had 'bad idea' written all over it. Why the hell had Trepe taken him along, anyway?

He glanced over at his former Instructor across the walkway. The young SeeD had her head bowed down, staring into the bottom of a paper bag and holding her head up with her hands. Save the Queen lay coiled in her lap like a leather kitten (albeit one with silver fangs), her trench coat hanging off her legs to reveal dark pants and her trademark boots. It was odd to see his mentor-of-sorts in such a compromising position- hunched over, miserable, and doing a piss-poor job of trying to hide it. Seifer hid a chuckle. Trepe evidently wasn't as indestructible as she tried to let on. It was almost endearing.

_Endearing_? Seifer frowned as the word flitted across his brain. Where the hell did **that** come from?

"And off to your left, we see the Great Salt Lake," babbled Selphie, who had evidently missed her calling as a pilot-slash-stewardess. "If you look closely you can see a small concentration of Abadon." Sure enough, moving through the pale landscape, Seifer could barely make out the awkward limbs of the spindly carnivores moving across the plains.

The plane ride had provided interesting enough scenery, (between Quistis almost puking and muttering obscenities at Selphie every time the plane lurched, the emerald hills of Balamb and the shimmering, sun-dappled skin of the ocean.) The scenery, however, did little to quell the impending sense of dread that he felt coiled tight in his stomach.

_Don't fuck up, Almasy_.

His eyes snapped open as the plane began its descent, ears snapping like popcorn and stomach leaping up to perch in his throat as the plane swooped down with a thunderous crash.

"Your best landing yet, Selphie." Muttered Quistis, wobbling to her feet.

The group rustled to gather their things, zipping up the black trench coats and hefting their weapons and overnight bags onto or over their shoulders. Selphie pocketed the ignition keys in one of the jacket's zippered pockets and pulled on her mittens. "Did everyone enjoy the ride?"

Quistis opened her mouth, then apparently thought better of whatever she was going to say. She turned and walked down the now opened ramp instead, following Xu. Brek gave him a cold, appraising look, then followed down after Quistis. Seifer noticed with a small amount of satisfaction that his pretty little nose still sat at a slightly funny angle.

Wouldn't take much to jar it loose again...

No. Pleasantries such as punching Brek in the face were not a luxury he could afford to be taking, especially on this mission.

The cold air was a welcome awakener from the warm, humid air of the ship. Apparently the last of fall was also taking hold of the Estharian landscape. Seifer squinted in the wind, eyes settling on a small patch of old-looking dwellings not far in the distance. So this was Tromedia. From the clump of cobblestone and dusty brick roofs a tall tower poked out, antennae appendages spiking out into the cloudless blue sky.

The communications tower.

Xu turned, speaking above the wind. "We'll check our baggage at the Forget- Me-Not Inn, after which we'll divide into two teams. Seifer and Selphie, you're coming with me. We're going to check out the tower itself. Quistis, Brek, I want you both to check out the townspeople, rule out or rule in the possibility of deliberate vandalism or espionage."

Seifer noticed out of the corner of his eye that Quistis seemed less than pleased about her assignment with Brek. It was hidden from any outside observer that didn't know her very well, but Seifer considered himself to somewhat of an expert on the mood swings of Quistis Trepe, having been stuck with her daily over the course of the past few months. He had watched her very carefully in her classroom, scrutinized every frown and sigh, every flick of her wrist and every narrowed gaze. It was the way he had watched all of them, analyzing, looking for weakness. Now, he could appreciate the benefits such a prior study had awarded him- warnings and insights, a crude blueprint as to just what made Garden's youngest Instructor tick.

An interesting study, Quistis Trepe, all in all.

It was just beginning to sink in with him that he was now stuck with Xu and Selphie - one couldn't stand him, and they _both_ irritated the hell out of him. Xu was going to watch him like a hawk, and Selphie was going to overpower him with perkiness.

His sanity was doomed…assuming he had any left.

The group walked slowly into town, the looks from the villagers clearly indicating the average Tromedian was a) not used to military personnel, or b) didn't like military personnel. Stares mixed with equal parts of fear and contempt made both answers likely.

The stores were small, quaint, the front windows no doubt displaying most of the entire store's merchandise. Little carts with fresh cut flowers were guarded by little old ladies with big straw hats and price signs, and each front porch seemed to bear an old fart in a rocker. The Forget-Me-Not Inn was a quaint, three-story dwelling, undoubtedly the largest structure in town aside from the communications tower. Window boxes sat on each of the French-dressed doors, the blue shutters a pleasant contrast with the milky stone sides. A welcome mat embroidered with kittens eating daisies sat on the front steps.

Hyne. This fucking town was giving him cavities.

He looked around the hotel, dropping his bag, studying the potted plants and the even more nauseating flowered wall hangings. This had to be some sort of drug ring. No one else decorated this way on purpose.

"Hello, how may I help you?" He whirled at the sound. The woman behind the counter smiled pleasantly, heavy lashes batting a mile a minute as she leaned over the counter, gazing at him. Seifer nearly jumped a mile back. The woman, unlike the other villagers, seemed **very** friendly. The woman had about three chins, and all of them jiggled when she moved a cubic inch. She wore a tight, flowered blouse, each of the front buttons around the bustline screaming for help. Her already frazzled bottle-red hair was combed into a wild frizz, sprayed up into the strangest hair configuration he had ever seen in his life. She was probably no older than her mid 30's, but the generous clotting of make-up around her eyes, cheeks and lips made her look like a mummy clown. Her grin grew wider, stealing from one of her chins to allow her cherry-red lips to stretch even farther. For a horrifying moment, he thought she was going to swallow him.

"Uh." He coughed, looking to the others. "Vacancy?"

She placed her hand on his shoulder, her grip surprisingly strong. "I'm Maria Glips. And of course we've got vacancy for a handsome soldier like you!" She gripped his hand. "And unmarried too, I see! What a treat! We don't get many visitors out here."

_I'll bet,_ thought Seifer ruefully._  
_  
She leaned forward, and he caught cheap perfume and the scent of chicken on her neck. Or one of them, rather. It was all he could do not to back away. "Will you be having a single room?" she asked sweetly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Quistis unsuccessfully try to hide a smirk. Selphie, however, was giggling her fool head off behind her hand. Quistis elbowed her.

Xu finally stepped forward, evidently deciding that he'd suffered enough. "That won't be necessary. This is the SeeD team from Balamb. I called earlier. We already have two rooms reserved."  Cid had requested that their presence in Tromedia be made publicly known, whether to flush out any trouble or to maintain a public forum should anything go to hell in a handbasket none of them could say.

Maria cast a sour look at Xu. "I see." She replied, stepping behind the counter to flip open a very worn leather registry journal. "Ah, here you are. SeeD. Two days, am I correct?"

Xu nodded. "That's our hope, yes."

Maria nodded sweetly, handing over two pairs of keys from the wood keyboard behind her. "There you go, rooms 21A and 22B." She looked directly at Seifer, wetting her lips in a painfully exaggerated gesture. He felt unnervingly like a chicken wing. "Please, don't hesitate to call if you need **any**thing."

Quistis turned her laughter into a racking cough, but the twinkle in her eyes gave it away. He grabbed his bag, walking up the staircase beside her. "Something funny?" he hissed.

She turned and gave him a smile that would have dazzled the pants off a stone statue. He nearly fell down the stairs, and was immediately disgusted with himself.

"I think it's sweet," she replied, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

Seifer gave her a mock glare. "Laugh it up. There's probably a reason you don't see a lot of people in this town."

This time she really did laugh out loud. "What are you suggesting? That she eats her guests?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "Believe what you want. I'm locking the damned door tonight."

…

…

…

…

Quistis frowned as she walked through the cobblestone streets, dodging the carts and the occasional car or two. Thus far, their attempt to interrogate the citizens had gone less than optimally. So far, they'd gotten a weather report from the resident alcoholic, gotten a lecture on finance reform from an old chain smoker, and sat through a three hour-long account of an old lady and each of her fifty cat's lives. No one seemed to know or care about the communications tower- in fact, the overwhelming majority was certain that it attracted alien life and wanted it gone.

They were nearing the edge of the last street in a five street town, the one closest to the tower itself, and Quistis was more than ready to meet up with the rest of her colleagues at the diner Xu had selected.

She hoped, feverently so, that her fellow comrades were having better luck.

She really didn't understand Xu sometimes. Why, if she didn't want to deal with Almasy, did Xu put him on _her_ team? Quistis mentally shrugged. Xu wanted him, Xu could deal with whatever ramifications came along with it. She sincerely hoped that her friend hadn't killed Seifer…it would mean a lot of paperwork for everyone.

Meanwhile, she was stuck with Brek Garek, quite possibly one of the more annoying creatures on the planet. She was beginning to think that he was a mosquito in a past life- shrill, whiny, and worst of all, persistent.

"I still don't understand why we have to go and check out this town. It's two steps behind civilization and one step away from the Dark Ages." He muttered sourly, reinforcing her theory.  "They don't know anything about the tower. Hell, I'm not sure half of them have _phones_."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "It isn't that bad, Brek." Given her history with the young cadet and his octopus-like nature during study sessions, she was less than inclined towards tolerance towards the young man. The last five hours had not exactly been a walk in the park.

Brek's handsome face broke into a scowl. "I didn't make SeeD to listen to the lives of old ladies, you know."

Quistis simply sighed and continued walking, ignoring her question as to why exactly he had become SeeD at all when he had a perfectly good trust fund waiting for him in his father's office.

"And why the hell is that lapdog along, anyway?" persisted Brek, casting a sidelong glance over at Quistis. He wouldn't question her authority outright, (Quistis outranked him by a few military light years), but he'd take stabs at it. He reminded her of some sleekly groomed piranha.

**Nibble, nibble. **

"_Seifer_," she corrected, "Is along to learn SeeD protocol."

Brek chuckled. "That's a joke." They turned the corner. "That son of a bitch is nothing but trouble, and anyone that thinks anything else is being hopelessly optimistic."

"He's not that bad." Quistis sighed for the fortieth time that day as she reached up to knock on one of the last doors on the street.

Brek's face curved into a sneer. "You _like_ him, don't you?"

"_What_!" she nearly shouted.

"What th' hell you people want!"

The two SeeDs turned to regard a short, squat little old man with a long beard and a discontented expression on his old, wrinkled face. In his hands double barreled shotgun, glinting dully in the light. A large, almost impossibly-sized dog ran up behind the man, baring a set of steak knife-sized teeth and barking up a storm, foam flying from its huge mouth. "Are you two solicitators 'er somethin'?" the old man yelled over the dog, trying to get ahold of its collar in one hand and maintain his hold on the gun with the other.

The two young people in front of him regarded him wide-eyed. Quistis was the first to find her voice, in spite of the fact that the smooth barrel was aimed directly at her chest and that the dog seemed ready to launch past the old man's frail form at any second.

"Why no, we aren't. We're SeeD. I'm Quistis Trepe, and this is-"

"Eh? What's that? Some sorta gardening club? What the hell you people want?" The barrel wavered. Brek reached to draw his weapon, but Quistis immediately took a firm hold on his arm, shoving him back a little after giving him a dirty look.

She turned back and smiled nervously, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. "We just wanted to know if you noticed anything about the IGCS tower lately, the one that lies at the edge of the town. The ones that the military Gardens constructed? Are you familiar with it?"

The old man lowered the barrel a little. "The tower, eh? Well why didn't y' say so! That Hyne-darned contraption...somethin' finally bein' done about it, huh?" the old man continued to mumble as he turned, shuffling into the living room and taking a seat on one of the apparently mouse-ridden couches. "Come in, come in."

The dog remained in the doorway, spraying a foamy spit with each bark and muscles quivering beneath the thick, dirty skin. Brek looked ready to shoot the thing.

Quistis hesitated. "Is he...friendly?"

"Eh? Shuga?" The old man glanced over at the four-legged security system as if he had just realized it was there. "Big baby. All bark."

Quistis had her doubts, but she moved past the snarling mass, keeping her hands far away from the 'all-bark machine'.

"What's that ya wanna know?" He reached over to a rickety table, sliding on his glasses. The thick, bottle-sized lenses made him look less intimidating and more like a wide-eyed, white-haired bug. "Aye, yer a pretty one, ain'tcha?" he grinned, showing all three remaining teeth that hung like rotting kernels on a half-eaten corn cob.

'Shuga', or Sugar, in the meantime, seemed to have developed an interest in gnawing on Brek's boot, who looked too scared to remove the expensive shoe from the dog's mouth. Her liking for the dog increased several notches.

Quistis just smiled and also took a seat on the ratty old couch, causing a flurry of dust to rise up in a cloud. "Thank you. Now, what can you tell us about the IGCS tower, please?"

Brek, who chose to remain standing, took that moment to speak up. "Have you noticed any suspicious activity around there lately?" He was still try to wedge his boot out of 'All-Bark's' mouth.

The crotchety fellow glared over at Brek, whose shoe was still being ravaged by his dog. "The hell's he?"

"A fellow SeeD," replied Quistis. "Now-"

"I don't think ye should be cartin' around with that 'un." Said the man, peering at Brek over his spectacles. "Ya should get an older man, knows what's what."

Quistis frowned. _Did he just wink at me?_

_Yes he did._

Deciding to play along, she leaned forward. "You must know a lot of things."

"Das right, little lady." The old geezer seemed pleased with himself. Quistis highly doubted that the old man really knew much of anything, but he seemed like the nosy type. Those types of people, while usually annoying to their neighbors, were usually the most helpful in an investigation.

"So you must know all about the IGCS tower." Pressed Quistis gently. 'Sugar' had taken a friendly interest in sniffing her leg, and was currently enjoying a tentative pat around the ears. She was careful to keep her hands away from the dog's cavernous mouth.

"Eh. Damned people always swarmin' around it. Specially last month. Damned noise kept me up all night. You young people and your new-fangled contraptions-" the old man was apparently preparing to launch himself into the familiar old-man-rant-about-technology lecture, one Quistis had already heard at least twenty times that day.

"The noise?" she inquired quickly, before the old man could get himself fired up about 'new-fangled contraptions'.

"Yeah, danged noise. All them trucks an' people dinkin' around there, in th' middle of th' night…"

This was getting interesting. Military activity a month ago was a large coincidence.

If, in fact, it was coincidence at all.

"This is important. Do you remember exactly what day you heard the noise?" If she could tie the information to a date, the information could be twice as valuable.

"Hmmmm...Lesee here. Think those damned excuse for garbage men came that day, knocked the mailbox down again..musta been th' first Sunday o' last month."

**Bingo**.

She switched her attention to the dog's left ear. "Do you remember what the trucks looked like?"

The white haired man gave her a sardonic look. "In th' middle o' th' night, can't see much o' nothing, honey."

"How did you know they were trucks then?" asked Brek, folding his arms and glaring at him.

The old man returned the look with a gap-toothed sneer on its own. "Bicycles doan' make no sound like a gut cough, sonny. These was big trucks."

Brek rolled his eyes, but seemed unwilling to make a comment seeing as long as both the man's shotgun and the dog remained in the room.

"Idjit." Muttered the geezer under his breath. Quistis stifled a smile. The dog now had its massive head lolled in her lap, tongue hanging out, and letting out a contented growl. The thing really was a big baby. It reminded her of Seifer a little. All bark and no bite.

Well, perhaps not exactly. Squall's forehead was a prime example of Seifer's jaws.

"Is there anything else you can tell us? Have you noticed anything else suspicious in the area?"

The old man shook his head. "Damned neighbor keeps puttin' 's damned garbage on my side. Damned son of a bitch. I says, fine, you go ahead'n do that, but doan expect me to keep track a 'where Shuga be squattin' after he be eatin' all dem beans and-"

"But nothing concerning the towers?" interrupted Quistis.

"Jes' all th' damned noise. They ever gonna take that tower down?"

The young blonde shrugged. "I'm not sure, sir. We were just sent here to find out anything we could about the activity in the area."

The man just smiled again, looking down to where the large junkyard dog had curled up at her feet. "Shuga likes ya. Doan' like too many people, y'know." His old eyes twinkled at her. He was probably quite a lady killer, back in a day with greater hygiene…and greater amounts of teeth.

Quistis smiled. "He's a fine animal. Thank you for you time, Mr.-"

"Mister Drefford, they call me. But you kin call me whatever tickles ya."

There went that eye again, winking away.

"All right then, Mister Drefford. You've been a big help."

He stood, and offered out his hand. She took it, and was surprised to find that the man still maintained a wily strength about him. "Glad to help, Ms. Trepe." He replied, bowing down and briefly kissing the top of her hand, the whiskers of his beard tickling her skin. Quistis would have hard pressed to tolerate a move from anyone else, but she tolerated the old man's chivalry with a kind of generous indulgence seen only in her behavior towards the very young and the very old.

Quistis had always held a faint distaste for chivalry, as it tended to insinuate a child-like indulgence to more than competent women. But on the old man, it was…cute.

Said geezer grinned, happy with his success in 'romancing' the pretty soldier in front of him. "Been awhile since I had something 's pretty 's you in dis ol house." A brief sadness overtook his eyes a moment, and Quistis remembered the picture she had seen in the hallway- a young man and woman, smiling on a porch swing. His wife, most likely. "Y' shore ye gotta be going? Could cook up some o' me n' Shuga's beans for ya, think I got some whiskey around here somewhere..."

Quistis shook her head. She wouldn't have minded eating with the old man and his dog- they were interesting, and she was curious as to whether the old man knew more, but Brek seemed ready to dislodge a kidney stone from his vantage point in the corner.

"No, thank you. We've taken up too much of your time already. Would it be all right to come back sometime, perhaps ask some follow up questions if needed?"

Mr. Drefford nodded his ascension. "Course. **You're** welcome anytime, honey." He cast a pointed look at Brek, indicating just the opposite.

Brek stepped forward, shoving a clipboard in the old man's face. "We need your signature."

Mr. Drefford's eyes narrowed. "I ain't signing nothin' a yores, sunny."

Brek sneered. "We'll see about-"

Quistis snatched the clipboard away from her 'partner' in interrogation, offering it out to the old man. "This is a record of everything you've told me about the noise. Your signing it just says everything you believe everything you said is true."

Mister Drefford's face grew more wrinkles. "You believe me, doncha?"

She chuckled. "Of course. It's just military paperwork. You know, all that jazz for the stuffed shirts."

He chuckled himself. "All right, missy, I'll give you my autograph, since ya ask me nice." He scrawled on the pad, then handed it back to her, grinning. "You come back anytime n' visit. Been real nice talkin' to ya."

The screen door slammed shut behind them, 'Sugar' in the window and the old man waving at them from behind the almost pony-sized dog. She waved back, but Quistis felt a stare from a different direction. She turned, her eyes landing on a man across the street, glaring at her from his perch behind the newspaper. He was young, perhaps a little older than she was, and dressed in casual clothing, the same as every other pedestrian. She kept walking, craning her head to return the stare. He looked like just another anti- military villager. Something about his glare, however-

"I can't believe you let that old geezer paw you." Said Brek with disgust soon as they were back on the street, walking back to the rendezvous point. Quistis turned her attention back to Brek with a sigh.

"At least **he** was a gentleman," replied Quistis coldly, casting a pointed glance at her comrade.

They walked back the rest of the way in silence.

…

…

…

…

Seifer swore that if Selphie opened her mouth one more time, he was going to hang her by the hair from the nearest tree. She hadn't stopped talking since they'd started walking. At first, she'd admired the cuteness of the trees and the cobblestone walks, then obsessed over a cloud she was certain looked like Irvine's hat.

Unfortunately, she'd taken an interest in **him** next.

Her green eyes twinkled with a unique Selphie-like-light as she glanced over at him. "So, Seifer, how are things going with Quisty?"

He was surprised that she was even talking to him. He had, after all, had a lot to do with the destruction of her former home. Well, she had apparently decided they were on speaking terms, and far be it from him to deny conversation. It wasn't as if there was an abundance of it in his life from sources other than the three people that semi-willingly spoke to him every day.

He cast a skeptical look at her. "What do you mean?"

Selphie crossed her hands up behind her head as she walked, a lock of brown hair falling to curl in front of her right eye. Selphie really didn't look like a soldier, not even outfitted in a formidable looking trench and black army boots. The boots were half-laced, pink kitten socks sprouting underneath, and the trench coat made her look more like a kid dressed up in daddy's work clothes than a soldier. If he hadn't been pelted upside the skull with her nunchaku more than once during his run-ins with the 'Heroes', he would have doubted she knew how to swing them.

She just grinned wider. "I mean, how are _things_?" She scrunched one eye shut, elbowing him in the ribs. His frown deepened. The girl was clearly insane.

"The hell's wrong with your eye?"

Xu turned around. "Quiet, you two."

Selphie stuck out her tongue at Xu's back, and Seifer stifled a grin.

Xu walked ahead, impervious to her mockers.

The tower approached, the thing at least eight stories high not counting the hundred foot antennas that protruded into the sky. It was a formidable looking building, and Seifer wondered at the gil that went into something like that. That was one fucking expensive military walkie-talkie, that was for sure.

A large metal gate came into view, two guards posted at each door with their arms folded, looking stoic. Xu approached them confidently, steel in her step.

Not to mention a ten-foot metal rod up her ass, but that was Seifer's thought.

"SeeD from Balamb Garden here to inspect the communications failure." Xu presented an official looking document from inside her coat, holding it up for the guards to see. "Request permission to enter the premise."

The two young men looked unimpressed. The taller of the two regarded the group with the cool stare. "Permission denied."

Selphie frowned. "And why's that?"

The soldier's expression morphed into a smug smile. "The tower is closed for repairs."

"For the past _month_? And Balamb was not notified of these changes?" All traces of Selphie's easy going nature had faded, replaced by a hard anger that shone in her eyes like blade metal.

The soldier held up his hand. "It would be difficult to contact you about the communication failure if the IGCS tower was down, wouldn't it?"

"That will be your official statement, anyway." Muttered Xu. "I suppose they don't have any other phones in Tromedia?"

"Besides," continued the soldier. "The communications tower is neutral ground, soldier, not the sole property of Balamb. Permission to enter must be obtained-"

Xu's hackles were really rising now. "Garden contributes _over_ a third of the total funds needed to run this tower, and you're going to deny its representatives access?"

The soldier remained unphased. "I told you, the tower is neutral ground. And we are neutral guardians as such." The men were dressed in plain blue uniforms with a communications insignia on the breast, standard-issue rifles at their waists. The clothing was neutral enough, but the men's eyes belied their dress.

Seifer Almasy knew the look of a traitor well.

He folded his arms. "You seem awfully smug for someone who's neutral." He sneered.

The other soldier just smiled at him, but there was something empty in his stare, something colder than contempt. It was the same with his comrade, and the looks chilled Seifer for an unknown reason. "_Almasy, am I right_?"

Seifer stiffened. How the hell did that guy know his name?

The man continued, a coolly innocent expression on his face. "We have no affiliation to any garden, as you can see. We're only doing our jobs. Wouldn't want you SeeD's getting hurt with all the construction inside."

"I'll bet," mused Xu, darkly. "Don't worry, we'll be coming back."

"Please do." Smiled the soldier coldly.

The trio turned, their furious leader stalking the way back. Seifer had a feeling that, as Xu had said, they'd be back soon. It suited him just fine- he looked forward to shoving those guard's smug little expressions up their asses. The look in those eyes- cold, indifferent, a mocking confidence- where the fuck had he seen that gaze before? Why did it weigh so heavily in his gut?

"Well, that went well." He muttered.

"Shut up, Almasy," barked Xu, snapping her head around.

Seifer just shook his head. The ugly beast known as PMS must have taken hold of...another ugly beast.

…

…

…

…

The diner, which Seifer aptly named the Greasy Spoon after ignoring the sign on the window, was a tiny little place with a few scattered booths, a buffet table slathered with grease and metal dishes, and a counter with spinning barstools that were probably antiques in their own rights. The darker portion towards the back served as the bar and the buffet, and the spots by the window belonged to the diner. It was probably the only bar in town.

Seifer smirked. If _he_ had to live in this hell-hole, he'd build a hundred bars to amuse himself.

"Ooooh! Buffet!" Selphie shrieked as she flounced off, a trail of trench coat and energy.

Xu slunk into one of the booths, resting her hand on her chin. "I had hoped for this to be easier." She muttered.

"Well what the hell did you think they were going to do? Open the gates and hand us complimentary mints?"

From the look on Xu's face he could tell that it was something very much like that.

Xu brought up her head to award him a decent glare. "All this talk from someone who isn't fit in ranking to lick my boots."

He leaned forward, awarding her his most ruthless smirk. "Lick your boots? Dirty girl. If you wanted to get kinky Xu, all you had to do was pay."

Xu's gaze darkened. "Go to hell, Almasy."

Seifer studied the ceiling. "Thought I was there already." _You're here, after all_, he added silently.

"You should be, after all the shit you pulled," spat the SeeD in front of him.

His smirk never wavered. "Don't be getting too friendly. I might get the wrong idea."

Xu leaned forward, a smile that was more of an angry grimace perching on her lips. "A couple minutes more of your talking, and I'll shove the nozzle of my gun up your ass. How's _that_ for friendly?"

He shrugged. "Is that the way you treat all your dates?"

"Only the really lucky ones."

"Really, Xu. Your claws are showing."

"Fuck yourself, Almasy."

"Things not going how you planned, huh? It's a long fall down when reality knocks you off your high horse, isn't it? How's your ass?"

"Oh look, a clever telegram from rock bottom." Returned Xu coldly. She leaned forward, craning her head as if to hear some distant sound. "What's that? I can't hear you from down there."

The former knight in front of her seemed unphased. "Really, Xu. I think you're just hurt because, for once, your I'm-Xu-the-military-Amazon-bitch- persona didn't move any asses. Not that it's ever moved any dick, I'm sure."

"_You son of a_-"

"Are you two ready to order?" asked a middle-aged woman, impatiently tapping her somewhat chewed pen against her green lined pad as if squabbling soldiers were something she came across every day.

Seifer grinned up at her, a look that didn't fail in winning a generous smile back from the aged, tired face. "I'll have the breakfast platter. Xu, the usual? Saucer of cream?"

For a moment he thought Xu really was going to try to shove the gun in an unmentionable area. "I'll have the cobb salad," she replied evenly, while shooting him a murderous glance.

"Anything to drink?"

"Water," replied the two in unison, one smiling, the other looking as if she wanted to rip the lips off of her booth-mate's face.

After the waitress had left, Selphie slid into the booth next to Xu in an energetic slide, nearly knocking the dark-haired lieutenant over. Seifer abandoned playing with Xu for the moment in order to appreciate (or gaze in mild revulsion) at Selphie's eating habits.

Her plate was piled high with every kind of food imaginable. Eggs were piled on pancakes, and bacon strips were stuffed all around the sides like a meaty porcupine. Her plate alone was enough to make him nauseous. _More_ disgusting was the fact that she was likely to eat it.

"You kids getting along?" she asked, wedging half a pancake into her mouth. Shit. With someone like Selphie eating here, the place'd be out of business in a week.

Xu rolled her eyes and Seifer awarded her yet another smirk, leaning back in the booth and tapping his gloved fingers on the wooden top.

Silence overtook the small booth as Selphie dug into her smorgasbord and Xu's eyes flickered with murderous thoughts as she swished the ice in her glass. The waitress came and left, depositing their lunches and leaving in a flurry of bacon grease and worn out sneakers. The other patrons of the restaurant, mostly old men sporting flannel coats and coffee cups, regarded them with openly antagonistic stares and cranky dribble about military troubles. He stared back, eyes narrowed as he mirrored the look. Out of their league (and mostly out of their youth), the old men turned around and began grumbling about the weather instead.

Seifer eased the tension in his neck as he relaxed once more. He hated stares, hated stares in a way he hated boredom. Stares were simple, a prelude to action, whether aggressive or otherwise. Seifer preferred action. Anything else was a waste of preparation.

He looked down at his plate to find a pair of oily eggs, the white swimming in a sea of grease the pooled from the bacon strips on the sides. The toast, thoroughly burnt, was soggy with margarine. Seifer's stomach shrank back, conceding its rumblings in favor of disgust. He studied his silverware.

Yep. This place was definitely the Greasy Spoon.

Xu looked up suddenly. "Any luck?"

Quistis and Brek were making their way across the crowded diner. Brek's face looked as disgusted as Seifer's breakfast was making him, and Quistis looked irritated herself. Seifer noticed, with amusement, that Brek's left pant leg was torn to in shreds around his ankle, and that his boot boasted a heavy coat of slime. Looked like Brek had gotten some action from the neighborhood dog. Either that, or Quistis had snapped.

Brek stood in front of table, while Quistis slid in next to Seifer. He slid over to make room for her as she leaned back against the ripped cushions, looking exhausted. Brek looked as if he wanted to sit down as well, but one look from Seifer quickly halted all thoughts of squeezing into the booth next to Quistis. Instead, he pulled up a chair at the end of the table, scowling. Seifer left his arm up along the top of the booth and glared at Brek from behind Quistis, who was now also engrossed in Selphie's eating habits.

Brek rolled his eyes in response to Xu's earlier question. "If by 'luck' you mean spending an entire afternoon surrounded by backwoods trash, listening to stories about cats and gallbladder infections-" he began.

"Actually," said Quistis, shooting Brek a glare as she stole a piece of Seifer's toast. "A Mister Drefford was quite helpful in establishing an event that could quite possibly be related to the tower's failure. Are you going to eat this?" she asked Seifer as she took another bite of his toast, not waiting for an answer. "What about on your end?" she asked, turning back to Xu.

Seifer watched the blonde-haired soldier in front of him eat off his plate with more amusement than annoyance. He took a bite of hashbrown, and quickly washed it down with some of the ice water.

"Not good." Xu scowled. "They wouldn't admit us, coughed up the excuse of construction and pulled the whole neutrality issue."

Quistis mirrored her friend's skulk. "Neutrality? What does that have to do with inspection?"

Xu just shrugged. "It beats me. Needless to say, we're going back there as soon as I think of a way to get in."

Seifer watched, mildly fascinated, as Quistis trimmed the whites off of the eggs and ate them separately, then cut up the yolk and piled it onto the toast. Hyne. She was meticulous even when she _ate_.

She swallowed her bite, then took a sip of his water. "Well, when did the communications failure begin?"

"The seventh of last month," replied Xu. "Why?"

She set the glass down triumphantly. She gestured to Brek, who reluctantly handed Xu the signed testimony. "Well then, we've already established our military basis for invasion. Espionage."

Xu's eyes glittered as she looked up from the report. "How?"

"Our eye witness placed a group of suspicious trucks and noise at the same time that night." Replied Quistis, leaning back in the seat. "We can act on suspicion."

"_Suspicion_? All you have there is the ramblings of a crazy old fool." Snorted Brek. "You can't just waltz in there based on a _suspicion_."

Seifer glared at him. "You've got a better idea, then?"

Brek opened his mouth, then apparently thought better of whatever words were perched on his lips. He snapped it shut, looking like a pouty child as he sank back into his chair and crossed his arms.

Xu drummed her fingers on the clipboard, chewing her lip. "All that remains is to get inside."

Seifer frowned. "We can't just bust in?"

Quistis shook her head. "If, for whatever reason, it actually is maintenance work, our invasion will look like an act of sabotage on _Balamb's_ part, and further disrupt the Trinity's already shaky alliance. If it isn't, then we have a means of reasonable doubt in the signed confession. A...political battering ram, of sorts."

The group fell silent, each brain cranking for a judicious (if not subtle) way in.

Xu took a sip of her water, eyes narrowed as she took in the 'couple' across from her. Seifer staring off into nothing, thinking, arm draped along the top of the booth seat behind Quistis, and Quistis neatly mopping up the yolk with the remaining toast, also lost in thought. Neither Quistis (who would have been hard pressed to look so relaxed around any other non- friend male), nor Seifer (who would have been hard pressed to look relaxed around anybody), seemed bothered by the proximity. Xu's scowl deepened.

Selphie paused, twirling a bite of French toast in her fork. "You know, I saw the garbage dump on the way into town."

Xu glared sidewise at the messenger girl. "Your point?"

Selphie shot Xu a dirty look. "The garbage dump has a truck. And garbage suits." She said, stuffing the bite in her mouth. "Ith obvioth. We pake fa puck n' an pake a wook in ba fower. Fey can't keepf ougt **barbafe** gen."

Seifer wasn't sure what was more alarming- that Selphie had eaten the entire plate or that he understood every single word she said. Or perhaps, that her plan was nearly as half-assed as he'd expect someone like Selphie to come up with.

Xu nodded, slowly, leaning forward. The rest of the group followed suit and spoke in hushes to avoid the nosy eyes and ears of the other restaurant patrons. "Borrowing municipal property seems like a necessary evil at this point. I don't want to wait for a search warrant…that will just make things more public than even Cid wanted. Besides, they could already be cleaning up whatever the hell it is they're doing in there. We'll infiltrate said place, then, and acquire both vehicle and disguise before proceeding to our main objective." The rest of the group nodded.

"First," whispered Selphie conspirationally. "Can I get one more plate?"

…

…

…

…

They'd been stuck in the back for an hour, knee-deep in garbage and the tension was really beginning to wear on everyone's nerves. Quistis stood next to him, arms folded and head held up high, eyes closed as if she could drown out her surroundings. It was most likely Quistis' own personality then her training to do so- Quistis had always been a daydreamer, although she had always been stoic about it, never wistful, staring seriously off into space. Leave it to Quistis to turn a pastime into a profession, even as a kid. They were all wearing garbage uniforms, and had sufficiently cloaked their appearance to prevent suspicion. The garbage dump had been empty, and all party members quickly got over the guilt of stealing a municipal vehicle. After one had stolen a spacecraft, Seifer supposed, all over theft paled in comparison. Xu was convinced they could steal the truck, check out the source of the problem, and have the truck back (undamaged) in record time.

Seifer had eventually adjusted the smell- it wasn't any worse than that old hotel room, after all. Death and whores, vomit and human filth, all combined into one terrible, nauseating stench, and that was one smell he didn't think he'd ever be able to adapt to. He'd rather die than drown in that stink again.

"It **had** to be a garbage truck." Muttered Brek, cupping his hand over his nose as he leaned up against the truck's wall, making him sound even more nasally annoying than before. His gun swung idly at his side, clinking up against the truck at every turn.

Seifer glared at him from across the truck, bracing his hand against the side as they hit another bump. "Do you ever stop bitching?"

Brent's eyes narrowed, holding up his rifle to point between Seifer's eyes. "Do you ever stop _breathing_?" Click. There went the safety. Seifer stared the barrel down, his eyes never leaving Brek's. He smiled, but behind the smile, he was seriously debating whether or not Brek had balls enough to pull the trigger. Unless he'd spontaneously grown a pair in the last three years, Seifer doubted it.  

But then, he had been wrong before.

Quistis glared up at Brek from her position next to Seifer, leaning up against the side. "Stop it, Brek."

Brek's eyes darted over to her quickly, his arm never lowering. "Please. We could write him off as a mission casualty, leave him compressed in the garbage. It's fitting- trash in trash. Who's going to miss him?" His finger tightened on the trigger. "I'd be a fucking hero."

"It'd be the first time in your fucking life, I'll bet." Seifer never took his eyes off Brek. It would take him longer to draw Hyperion than it would for Brek to pull the trigger. If Brek did have the balls, he was fucked.

Brek smiled. "How's it feel, Almasy? To be on the other end, I mean."

Before Seifer could respond, another bump caused all three to lean against the side to avoid tipping over into the filth.

Taking advantage of Brek's compromised balance, Quistis had drawn her own standard-issue pistol from the strap on her thigh over the coveralls, pointing it at the Brek's skull. "Put it down and quit fooling around, Brek." She ordered.

"You don't have the balls, Trepe." He sneered.

Quistis just smiled, eyes narrowing as her mouth took on a dangerous grin. "It doesn't take balls to pull a trigger." With a click, her safety was off. Brek looked taken aback, and Seifer could sympathize. Trepe was sticking up for him? Holy Hyne. How embarrassing.

Brek gave her a look that bordered on incredulous. "You're telling me you **care** about this piece of human filth?"

With a sudden heave and a squeal of long-ruined brake pads the truck lurched to a stop, forcing all three to grip the walls and preventing Quistis from completing her answer.

They were there- things were going to get interesting.

Brek lowered his weapon slowly, eyes flickering between Seifer and Quistis. Slowly, Quistis re-engaged her safety, reholstering the weapon, and Brek reluctantly responded in kind.

Seifer opened his mouth, then shut it just as quickly. What was there to say?

They group could hear the murmur of voices outside, then silence. The three stopped their hostilities a moment to attempt to find meaning in the silence.

Suddenly, the truck's rear hatch rattled, causing all three to draw their respective weapons and aim them at the hazy box of light, now growing larger as the door groaned open.

Xu and Selphie met their gazes, both gripping the collars of the guardsmen. "Knocked out," said Xu simply as Seifer reached down to pull one up into the truck, and Quistis and Brek lifted the other one in, laying the men down in the reeking garbage bed.

Selphie shrugged. "Guess we're not real convincing garbage women."

"Well, so much for subtlety." Xu straightened up, looking past the truck to the tower. Seifer peered out the door quickly, noticing that the gates were now open.

"We'll move the truck in to the doors, then proceed on foot. Close the doors." Xu looked from Seifer to Brek, eyes curtly assessing. "And put your dicks away, both of you. You won't need them for this mission."

The door slammed shut, once again leaving the three in semi-darkness.

"I hate that bitch." Muttered Brek.

Seifer folded his arms, leaning back against the truck once more and trying to avoid thinking about that fact that, for the first and most likely the last time in their lives, he and Brek Garek were in total agreement.


	18. Fall of the Trinity

"_Do you worry that you're not liked?_

_How long till you break?_

_You're happy 'cause you smile_

_But how much can you fake?_

_An ordinary boy_

_An ordinary name_

_But ordinary's just not good enough today_"

-Our Lady Peace, "Superman's Dead"

"The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest."_  
-Friedrich Nietzche_

Chapter 18- Fall of the Trinity

**_Chink_**_…………………**chink**…………………..**chink**………………………_.

Seifer crouched low beneath the shadows of an aluminum table, eyes flickering across the dimly lit room as he listened to the faint, rhythmic clink of some distant pair of chains. If the clinks were any indication of seconds, then he'd been here about five thousand, six hundred and-

A delicate scuffle behind him caught his attention momentarily before he turned back to the shadows. Stupid mice. Or rats. Or whatever the hell kept scuttling across the floors. Nothing that made that small a sound was of serious concern to him, for the moment.

He was waiting for a signal from Xu and Selphie- a signal that the higher towers were clear. Quistis' silhouette stood out across the room from him, back pressed against the wall as she waited to see the blink of Xu's flashlight indicating an all-clear signal.

The IGCS had been nothing like they expected. The tower's power had been completely cut save for a few scattered drainage gutters that filtered through an eerie array of sunlight, casting pallid shadows along the walls that danced with the tree shade outside. The air was heavy, stagnant, the silence as poignant as a closed fist. Their floors had been clear- he chased Quistis' shadow up the winding stairs and into the circular rooms, following the graceful weave of her form and the hollow clop of her boots as she darted across the walls like a golden-haired ghost.

It was odd to watch her back- she had presented it to him quite often as her student, but never in confidence. It was strange to observe her assurance, her silent stealth, her unspoken trust as she allowed him guard point behind her.

Stranger still, to learn from her in a way he never had as her student. Seifer already knew how to fight- he did it naturally and Quistis could teach him relatively nothing in this capacity. As far back as he could remember, he was born fighting, swinging, and resisting the military mold that ruined his dreams of grandeur. Trepe was the very epitome of order, and thus, he had resisted her as such. That…and it was fun to piss her off.

But if Ultimecia had taught him anything, it was the necessity of structure, of order. At the sorceress' side, he'd learned just exactly what the mayhem his mistress so richly savored dealt to the world around them, and to him.

And so now, older, perhaps wiser, and decorated with more scars, he followed Trepe's lead, unconsciously tracing her steps and the fleeting forms of her polished procedure. Mostly, however, he had stared at the hollow of her neck- how her pulse beat there as she stopped as still and elegant as a deer in watch, blood pumping through the slender vein and fueling her quiet, raspy breaths.

_Too delicate._

He watched her, quietly scrutinizing her the way art collectors stare through glass at masterpieces that can never be touched. Trepe was no soldier, not really- she was too beautiful, too proud, held too fast to the vain grace that was her own personal pride. Despite her past, she still carried it- it was there in the careful, cold gleam of her eyes, in the stiff and calculated poise of her spine. She was a beautiful killer. But she would never be a soldier.

A soldier crawled, unbidden, into the muck of humanity, fueled only by the idea of a faceless maternal figure spurring him to whatever victory was the flavor of the week. A soldier accepted the ugliness of the world, wore its filth as chain mail against the new horrors he was sure to encounter. It braced him- he survived, because he expected it, knew it, personified it. It was already in him.

Trepe, however, would forever question that refuse, question the necessity and the horrors of _evil_. She would be forever wounded, forever surprised and spun in circles between what _should_ be and what it _was_.

And so he watched her, now, breathing her air and staring through the dimly lit shadows to see what she saw. Maybe he could shoulder her mantle- see the beauty in the burden that she seemed to believe was there. But what they saw would never be the same, the air they breathed tainted by different elements. They were in the same room, existed in the same medium. But they would forever be miles apart.

She stood on a pedestal, forever above and beyond that which she fought and protected.

He would always be a soldier, inches deep and the muck and mire that he sought to slaughter.

Seifer flicked his sword, watching the play of light across the blade. Shadow, but no movement. It was a simple surveillance trick, but one that had saved his skin more than once.

He sighed softly, letting the air out slowly through his teeth. He could still smell the garbage on his ankles, intermingled with the drafty, rodent-urine-infested air that swirled around the tower's crappy ventilation system. A coffee cup lay overturned just next to him, barely visible in the light. He flicked the blade again, then gave up trying to amuse himself with the shadows. This was ridiculous.

They'd been in here for over an hour, waiting for Xu and Brek to clear the higher levels and Selphie to clear the lower. The middle levels had all checked out- the small flashlight had revealed nothing but silence and the scuttle of rodents in each large, circular room.  There was certainly no maintenance, and there was certainly no staff.

A month's inactivity would explain the rodent-infestation, that was for sure. He sincerely doubted that the 'Garden Trinity Alliance' was at as much risk as Cid seemed to think, despite Cid's recent 'development' with Martine.

Martine, however, politically respected and connected, wouldn't try such a bold move- compared to a possessed Edea, the man was a military kitten. Seifer knew that firsthand. He was, however, inclined to agree with Cid's assessment of Martine's character- the man was more than he seemed, like any other politically-minded individual. Seifer himself had never had much use for politics- his distaste lay in keeping with his feelings on preludes to actual action. Politicians were masters of stalling- Seifer considered them the antithesis of productivity. Martine, however, had never struck Seifer as a politician- too soft, too outwardly soft-spoken. Ambitious, maybe, but hardly ballsy enough to initiate a first strike maneuver. The man **seemed** a passively aspiring politician, and really, there was no such thing.

Contrasts in people bothered Seifer- they usually veiled a somewhat less than pleasant medium.

Martine might be an ambition-junkie, yes. A saboteur of communication systems in the interest of military monopolies? Not quite.

He glanced across the room, eyes falling on what he believed was Trepe's form.

**Thud**.

He glanced up sharply. Now _that_ was bigger than a mouse.

Seifer rolled, springing to his feet as Hyperion whirred behind him for a strike or a counterstrike, depending on what followed the loud, dull sound. Blood rushed to his head, and as he heard Trepe stumble up beside him, he closed his finger around the trigger-

"Top floors all clear." Announced the shadow. Seifer relaxed, but only slightly.

_Why the hell was Brek down, and not Xu?_

"Brek, you fucking idiot." He muttered.

"What?" snapped the shadow. "I _said_-"

He felt Quistis' warmth beside him suddenly- her movement was almost invisible in the darkness.

"Where's Xu?" Alarm in her voice, evident to Seifer in what was carefully absent in her tone. With Quistis, Seifer was starting to realize that she usually meant more in what she didn't say than in what she did.

He could just imagine Brek Garek in the dark, rolling his eyes like a five-year-old. "Xu's-"

Suddenly, the tower roared, to life, the lights nearly blinding him as they all flickered on in one terrible roar. Seifer put his hand in front of his eyes, grimacing as the light nearly shriveled his eyeballs in their sockets.

"Get down!" shouted Quistis, as all three hit the floor just as the air around them exploded with gunfire.

Seifer rolled underneath the table, his vision clearing just enough for him to see Brek dive behind him and Quistis roll beneath the table on the adjoining side. They were apparently in an ops room, the control switchboard room at that. Machinery burst into sparks as the bullet fire sprayed across it, and Seifer saw a barrage of military personnel and small machinery he recognized as Sensbots swarm into the room. Sensbots were flying machines that relied on motion to trigger their heavy artillery. A Garden prototype, if memory served him correctly.

"This is SeeD, neutral Balamb ambassadors come to determine the cause of the IGCS failure!" shouted Quistis. "Cease fire immediately!"

The fire, if anything, intensified.

The soldiers were dressed in gray uniforms, their faces covered by shiny plastic face shields the color of polished mercury. The gunfire was fairly blinding, and he felt a sudden and immediate jolt slash through his arm as a stray flit of pulse fire caught through the flimsy garbage uniform. He noticed that the guards were using two different types of ammo, one a pulse ammo that seemed to bounce off of his self-erected barrier as was expected, and the others, a shell ammo that didn't.

"Get down!" He saw Quistis gesture, and shut his eyes as the room erupted in a shower of blinding sparks once more. Seven of the Sensbots slammed into the wall, sparking from the kiss of Quistis' Thundaga spell. The men, however, had all grounded themselves, indicating some level of training. Not a single one was speaking, indicating they had erected some sort of com system between them. Either that, or they were all of the same mind.

Another shuddering roar of light filled the room, destroying another six of the bots, whose fire mercifully ceased. Seifer followed the casting radius of the spell, only to find Xu at the other end of it. The lights flickered, then went out once more. The fire ceased, leaving behind an eerie silence.

"Where's Selphie?" shouted Quistis.

"Not sure!" shouted Xu.

"Quit firing, you idiots!" Brek, trying to reload his weapon in the dark. The room was filled with the fragile chime of shell casings dropping down as weapons were restocked for the coming firefight. Seifer understood the soldiers' reluctance to fire- neither the SeeD team nor the enemy wished to hit any more of the electrical wiring than was necessary.

Shadows, but no movement. The tower surged, trembled, the very walls shaking with the force of the electricity running through the walls.

The lights were about to return. There wasn't much time.

When the lights came on again, they'd be caught in a firing squad, and he knew for certain his own support shield wasn't going to hold much longer. He knew for a fact that he, Xu, and Quistis were the only Thundaga carriers- Selphie was stocked with Forbidden and support magic, and Brek carried ST magic, not being much of a caster. Xu and Quistis had just cast- they'd be too weak to cast again soon. It was up to him.

_Shit_.

"Thundaga!" he hissed, and stretched out his fingertips. Lightening sprung through his veins, a tremor that snaked up his entire arm as a thick arc of bolts flew through the room. He swore as the magicleft his fingertips, the electrical aftershock still coursing through his arm. He hadn't cast right, hadn't loosened up his arm and fuck, it was hurting.

The lights burbled on, illuminating the smoking corpses of the remaining Sensbots, and one of the enemies that had gotten to his feet too soon.

Quistis pressed the advantage, leaping to her feet and dragging one of the men to the ground with her whip, the flaccidity of his body indicating that the jerk had broken more than one crucial bone in his neck. She cast another Thundaga spell before holding up another shield, biding her time. Really, all the Thundaga spell did was stall them. These soldiers all had some advanced knowledge of military procedure.

Another soldier suddenly grasped at his neck, and Seifer looked behind the flailing man to see Selphie, eyes narrowed as she dropped the now lifeless soldier to the ground, shouting something.

There were too many of them, and both Quistis and Selphie were going to be in trouble soon if the enemy pressed forward again.

Seifer looked back to Brek. "Cover me!" he shouted, tearing out into the open and drawing up Hyperion, rushing with a kick and taking another two soldiers down with a half-arc, the blade fairly singing as it briefly drank from the armor and cut straight through to the flesh.

Three down.

Seifer looked up to see an armed soldier point straight at him after reloading his rifle, his own face reflected in the black visor.

The one Brek should have taken out by now.

He started to raise Hyperion, his finger on the trigger, but he never had a chance. Before he could draw another breath, he spun, a hot, stabbing pain in his shoulder spreading forth like acid in his veins. He stumbled back, fumbling for his sword and grasping air. The world slowed, became more painful with each second. Each bullet spray became the a harsh, distant scream- he saw the faded grey of Selphie's pullover and the blue of Quistis' eyes blur into a beautiful cornflower shred of sight-he shouted, and the shout became a horribly distorted, painful shard, twisting into his throat like a swirling cauldron of bile- and…nothing…nothing…_nothing._

Quistis saw Seifer spin back like a top, tumbling to the ground as Hyperion went flying in a clumsy, silver arc. She glanced behind him, seeing Brek holding his weapon with the nose down, a blank look over his features as the gunfire flickered in his eyes. His eyes glazed over hers, his own protection spell illuminating his face. She'd seen Seifer turn and shout something to Brek, seen him dart out and fell three of the men while his protect shield took substantial damage. The bullet, however, must have come from a soldier directly within Brek's range.

He hadn't covered Seifer…………………._intentionally_.

Furious, she scrambled to her feet, readying Save the Queen as she angled her body to roll out from behind the table. She felt Selphie's Shell spell take ahold of her as she darted out, felt the heat of Xu's fire just above her shoulders as her squad leader covered for her. It was standard procedure- however, the bold move required confidence in one's backup. It was what Brek should have done- what she would kill him for _not_ doing if they got out of here alive.

She sized up the battlefield in a matter of seconds- 10 remaining men, all heavily armed, stood in a half circle backed up against the wall, their fire tattering her shield. The bullets pummeled the magic barrier, skipping across the shield like stones on water skins, nearly penetrating the surface with each skip. These were no normal bullets that had penetrated Seifer's shield and tore into his shoulder- these bullets apparently carried with them an anti-mag generator, one unlike Quistis had ever seen. In a moment, her own shield could break completely.

Without thinking, she darted out in front of Seifer's hunched form, lashing out with the whip as she advanced. Save the Queen, true to aim, curled around one soldier's weapon, jerking it from his hands and into her own. She lost no time in squeezing the trigger as the whip released its hold, relying on Selphie to hold her Shell spell on her as she opened fire on the other gunman. Lucky for her, the men were using no kind of support casting between them. Convenient, but unusual.

Between her fire and Xu's, the men crumbled.. No sooner did the gunmen drop, however, then the metal stairs above them thundered with more footsteps. Alarms were now going off all over the place, the sounds nearly as earsplitting as the firefight had been.

The tower, it seemed, was now perfectly operational, just not in the manner the SeeD team wished it to be.

They'd walked right into a trap.

Selphie looked up, eyes flashing. "As I was saying, there's another problem," she shouted. "There's a detonation device in the top tower, and judging from the extent of the wiring in that room alone-" she paused for breath, taking a deep gulp of air as she prepared to yell again, "They've run it through the whole building. One of them activated it before I could stop them, and it can't be reversed. Wires are trigger-sensitive. This whole place is rigged to blow in about………." She checked her watch. "Three minutes and forty two seconds…….three minutes and forty one seconds………"

Xu glanced up. "Well I suppose we've pretty much ascertained that the root of the problem behind the IGCS com failure is far from mechanic. Let's haul ass."

"There's another problem with that." shouted Quistis, from below. "Seifer's down."

Seifer struggled to keep his eyes open, the sounds and sights swirling into one bright pinpoint of pain in front of his eyes. He felt Quistis' hands on his face, framing his head firmly in her lap. He grit his teeth as another wave of pain shot though his shoulder and traveled the entire length and breadth of his body, eliciting a strangled gasp from his already clenched teeth. He'd been shot before, but it had never been like this. He took one breath, then another, till he felt like he was drowning in air, suffocating in it, so much air and he couldn't **breathe**-

"_Leave him." _

"_NO."_

"_What? You don't honestly think you can make it down those stairs? He's incapacitated!"_

"_You want to leave……….then leave._"

Their voices were fading away, becoming soft, distant echoes, and even the pain was fading……….which, vaguely, he realized, probably was worse than not feeling it at all-

"_Selphie, summon Carbuncle………Quistis………mobilize……….."_

"_Too much blood……….not a normal wound…………the bullet's going to have to come out"_

_"Give me one minute………………_…

He felt hands press on his shoulder, wet and warm against his skin. Seifer felt his eyes spin back into his skull, the light dimming, the sounds of the stairs shuddering, fading into darkness……………

_Her eyes on him, the dark orbs gleaming like shadowed rubies as she smiled, lips curling above her teeth as she looked down on him, chuckling, claws reaching down to pick at his tangled, tousled form. The darkness rose up in a roaring wave, waiting, hinging on her lips, waiting to swallow him whole at her command._

"_My Knight………_**ride** **for me**…"

He coiled back, tearing open his eyes to look into a pair of dark sapphire orbs, lit by gunfire.

_Quistis_.

Carbuncle's ruby light emitted a gentle green glow that stung his eyes. He lifted his head, trying to get to his feet, but slumped back down again. The men were still blocking their exit to the stairway, and most likely, more were coming.

"Seifer! Stay awake!" she shouted, ripping off her gloves as Xu handed her a small metal scalpel from the pocket-sized med kit all squad leaders were required to carry.

"One minute, Trepe." Xu turned back, her other hand trained on a weapon 'borrowed' from one of the dead soldiers. Xu turned away as she turned back to the fray. "All spellcasting switched to support mag!" she shouted at Selphie and Brek, who flanked Xu. If Selphie's eyes were remarkably calm, Xu's were stone. Brek, relatively green to all military things chaotic, was far from steady, but he held.

Seifer tried to climb to his feet, but the room spun once again, lurching violently to the right as he crumpled back down. Quistis once again peered down at him, arms firmly anchoring him back down. She leaned over him, tearing away at his shirt in one swift rip, the scent of her skin wafting down combined with the other fragrance of the chaos that filled room. Sweat, blood, and raspberries…he struggled to stay awake, to focus on her voice.

"Time?" shouted Quistis. He could almost see her words swimming in the air above her, drawn out and thick like string pulled slowly through his ears.

_None of them matter. Just let go, close your eyes…………come with me..._

"Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds!" shouted Selphie, never breaking her gaze with the soldier-infested stairs

"_That's right, Seifer. Close your eyes, let the feeling take over you……………..come to me………………….."_

"Seifer. Can you hear me? Curaga can't dislodge a physical element, Seifer. I have to remove the bullet." Her voice echoed, split into a million pieces in the air. He could feel her knees on his arms, weighing him down.

It was his only warning before she tore into his shoulder. The pain broke through the voices, the delirium, till it consumed everything. Even reason.

He hissed through his teeth as her fingers dug into his flesh, a red hot pain prickling behind his eyes as he nearly passed out from the shock. The lights wavered again……….he heard her speak……

"Seifer, stay awake!"

Quistis forced him down again, digging her elbow into his collar bone as she pressed her thumb against the head of the scalpel. The wires running along the tower sides had snapped loose, spraying sparks that rained hot on her cheeks.

Blood poured over his arm, and she noted with surprise that a long, jagged Firecross mark tattooed in black ink ran the length of his bicep as she smoothed away the river of blood with her palm. She took a deep breath, pressing the scalpel head down into the muscle of his arm as he hissed through his teeth at the ceiling, eyes rolling up and down like a light switch. The wound, beneath all the blood, looked dark already, the area around it swelling quickly. There was something seriously wrong, and Quistis had an inkling that it stemmed from more than the bullet in his shoulder. She hurried to stop the blood with her hand. Wound observation was not exactly part of emergency field medicine- she would look at it later, when they had more than three minutes to live.

He struggled again, and she saw delirium in his eyes, saw the pain consume his green irises and saw reason leave them. He struggled against her again, eyes flickering with bits of ebony thread strung over the eyeball, sprung from the dark of the pupil. He was talking muttering, pained whispers breaking from his lips like breaths.

Poison, perhaps, although she'd never seen poison take hold of a victim so quickly or so poignantly. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

She was nearly sick as she forced her fingers into his flesh, grasping soft tissue until her fingertip glanced the hard tip of metal. She'd had a basic training in field dressing, but none of it involved removing bullets with her fingers. Biting the inside of her cheek, she reached deeper, gripping through the tensed muscle and grasping the slippery capsule, pinching as hard as she could until the bullet shone in the rapidly diminishing Reflect shields.

_There wasn't much time. _

Quistis grimaced as she held the bloody, gleaming bullet in her hands. It was as large as an almond, silver, surrounded by bits of flesh and blood vessel, but something further caught her attention. She stared down at her hand, numb at the sensation.

The bullet was _beating_ in her hand, the racing pulse of her palm beating against the throbbing metal nestled in it. Her eyes widened, the beat soft against her skin……lulling, a rhythm whose vibration beat familiar in her palm-

"Quistis! We have to move! The reinforcements won't be long," yelled Xu, yanking her up as she pocketed the bullet. The blonde SeeD hunched over, gathering her arm beneath his back and struggling to sit him up. She almost lost her balance- he was too heavy……………

Suddenly, the load lightened, and she looked over Seifer to see an amazing sight- Selphie hauling up his other shoulder.

The brunette gave her a brief nod. "C'mon, Quisty! He's heavy!" Quistis nodded, then bent down to secure a very precious sword to her belt.

"**Move**, Seifer! Come on!"

_Was this hell?_

He opened his eyes, sweat running down his face and his side sticky and warm with blood. He felt with surprise his legs beneath him, albeit wobbly and nearly knock-kneed. He heard Quistis yell an order next to him, felt her shoulder beneath his good arm. The both of them stumbled down the stairs with Selphie behind them, counting out numbers with Xu screaming something ahead of them.

So this was SeeD procedure? Shit. It was more chaotic than a Trabian fire drill.

She leaned him against the wall, body anchoring him against the stairs as she pressed her hand firmly to the side of his shoulder, easing him down until it was his own legs walking, running, the adrenaline caused by her Curaga spells still singing in his veins. He heard a distant rumble, heard Xu shout behind them, but her voice was lost in the rumble.

He looked up to see the wiring spark and sway, saw chunks of concrete spiral down and crash into a cloud of grey dust at their feet, taking part of the spiral staircase with it. He gripped Quistis' shoulders, pulling her back just as the stairs dropped away, nearly sending them with it. The two looked down to see other parts of the stairs disappear with renegade chunk, their boots hanging just over the edge of the newly severed stairway.

Judging from the ground below, they were still at least four stories up.

"Forty-seven seconds!" shouted Selphie up to them.

"Jump." Breathed Quistis, hair blowing into her eyes as she stared down into what could very well be their grave.

Seifer braced his foot against the stairs, and in a sudden rush of strength, he pushed, launching them both down the stairs in a rolling, violent tumble. He heard Quistis utter a squelched outcry of pain as they landed. His breath whooshed out as his ribs connected with the metal staircase, which now groaned with the weight, swaying sickeningly from the wall in a sudden lurch that sent an entire row of bolts flying.

The whole thing was going to go down.

Dragging her up, he hauled her after him, releasing his hold as she regained her footing and ran on her own feet. Darkness threatened to narrow his vision, but he fought it, stumbling blindly towards the movement in front of him, the dark, stained coveralls of Xu.

He ignored the rumblings above him, knowing that should another piece of the staircase fall, it wouldn't do any good to look up.

_Just a little farther……………_

Sunlight stung his eyes, and he nearly collapsed. Quistis' arm was once again beneath his shoulders, and the truck was in view.

Selphie had stopped, and was looking back, eyes wide with wonder as she looked up from her watch.

"Four………….Three………..two………….one…………"

Both Seifer and Quistis turned just in time to see the IGCS crumble in one great, shuddering, split-second suspension of steel, wire, and concrete. The aftermath of the blast was almost enough to level the group, who shielded their faces with the front of their arms and stared through squinted eyes at the ruin of the Military Trinity's symbol of unity, crushing their enemy with it.

Not to mention their evidence.

Xu was hunched over, hands splayed on her knees as she caught her breath. Selphie looked sadly into the cloud of dust that remained, her nunchaku wound around her neck. Brek, also bent over, relieved himself of over half of his breakfast. Seifer simply tried to remain standing, trying to withstand the urge to rip Brek's face apart.

It was his own fault really, for trusting in the arm of a 'comrade'. He looked away, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his shoulder. It beat with a life of its own.

Quistis stood across from him, blood soaking the entire right side of her face as she gasped for breath.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "It…looks worse than it is." she replied, but he noticed her skin was a little pale, her voice a little softer than usual. She disentangled Hyperion from her belt, silently handing it to him before turning away and staring back at the recently ruined structure.

Surprised, he took the handle with his semi-good arm, stabbing the blade into the ground and leaning heavily on the handle. The pain in his arm had ebbed, the wound tingling with a feeling of tightness where the magic had sealed the skin over the incision. His other arm, however, was worse. Seifer knew if he rolled the sleeve of his left cuff, he'd see the dark, discolored magic burn running up the inside of his arm, the result of mis-Junctioning a Thundaga spell. He was probably lucky he still **had** an arm.

Seifer was no master of implication, but offhandedly, he'd say that things were no longer looking good for Balamb.

"What now?" he gasped.

Xu folded her arms. "Now, we return the truck, and haul ass back the hotel. I have to call Cid and report to him on the mission status."

"Which is?" chimed Selphie.

"Critical, I'd imagine." sighed their squad leader, starting for the truck.


	19. Dark Concertos in 22B

_I got my head_

_But my head is unraveling_

_Can't keep control_

_Can't keep track of where it's traveling_

_I got my heart, but my heart's no good_

_And you're the only one that's understood………………._

-NIN, 'The Perfect Drug'

Chapter 19- Dark Concertos in 22B

The wind picked up along the Tromedian streets, scattering the skeletons of leaves and the newly crumbled dust of the tower in front of them.

Quistis frowned at the wreckage, trying to wink the rapidly pouring stream of blood out of her eye.

"We'll return the truck, then report back to the hotel. We can take the men in for questioning." said Xu, kicking open the latch and throwing up the large metal door. The group stepped back, preparing for the attack of any conscious prisoners.

"Well, shit." Xu's eyes narrowed as they took in the sight of the truck, piles of soft garbage distilled by rank shadows.

The enemy was gone.

Having no time to cry over metaphorical spilled milk in light of the fact that the entire metaphorical kitchen might as well have been on fire, Xu simply sighed. "If something **can** go wrong..." she muttered, turning around and stalking to the front of the car. Selphie, after casting a careful look around, followed after her.

Quistis sighed, using the outside handles to haul herself up into the truck's back just as the engine started up. Brek and Seifer climbed in after, Seifer sluggishly dragging himself up to collapse against the truck's side with a muffled thud.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, looking at him with concern.

He gripped his shoulder, a twisted sneer affixing his bloody lips. "Like a million gil," he muttered, staring at the ceiling.

She gave him a weak smile in return, one that quickly faded as she saw Brek climb onto the truck. Quistis knocked on the glass portion of the small box window, the signal to go.

The tires squealed in response and the old truck lurched forward, sending Brek slamming up against the side of the truck.

"Hyne!" he swore at her, eyes flashing. "I was barely in!"

Quistis scowled, lifting her gaze to meet the haughty, narrowed eyes of the man across from her. With one swift movement, she had grabbed a fistful of Brek's shirt, and jerked him forward.

"What the **fuck**!" snarled Brek. "Get your hands off me!"

"When one member of SeeD team assumes attack point, all other members assume cover point. This goes double when cover point is **requested**." Her words were spat acerbically across the confined space, echoing angrily off of the aluminum sides. It didn't matter if she yelled- it wasn't as if those in the front could hear anything above the squeal of tires and the insistent banging of the back compartment on the wheel bearings.

She gripped one of the metal side ledges to keep her balance as she glared daggers at Brek, her hand still tangled in his collar.

"He isn't SeeD," spat Brek, attempting to shove her off of him. "Section A-512.5: SeeD rules do not apply to civilian-"

"You're quoting protocol to **me**? Please." Quistis sneered. "Section A-512.5 is talking about civilian detainees, not SeeDs in training, you fool. I'll have your rank for this."

"You can't pull **shit** on me, Trepe."

Quistis released her grip, watching Brek once again tumble into the side with a satisfying thud. "We'll see."

She hung on fiercely as the truck took a banked right, nudging the curb. Obviously, Selphie was driving.

Brek simply sneered at her. "Have you forgotten who my father is?"

"Failed protocol isn't a monetary issue." Snapped Quistis. "It's a military issue. You've often confused the two."

Brek just shook his head, the scorn on his face making the cut of his eyes almost dangerous. "Trepe, you'd be amazed what little difference exists between them."

"We'll see." she replied evenly, holding her head with a now bloody hand. She'd nearly opened her skull on the stairs when she had tumbled down with Seifer, his weight only softening half the blow. She had a feeling he'd taken the worst of the fall, and in his condition, he could hardly afford to.

A sudden lurch of the truck accompanied simultaneously by a loud, resounding crash sent both Brek and Quistis reeling against the left side of the vehicle. The truck promptly fish tailed, forcing them back again like ping pong balls on an aluminum court. Seifer, amazingly, remained slumped on the right side.

Quistis could barely make out Xu's shout. Company, no doubt friends of the escapees (if not the ex-prisoners themselves).

The blood was pounding in her ears, the thump mixed with equal parts of pain and anger.

Brek just smiled as he regained his position, hooking his hand into one of the ceiling prongs. "That waste of space over there," he scorned, pointing a blurry finger in Seifer's direction, "Is **not** a SeeD." He was shouting now, his usually haughty demeanor now that of a spitting hyena cornered by a pride of lions.

Quistis just glared at him. "And you won't be, for long."

Brek gazed across at her, eyes heated and voice deceptively calm. "**Whether** or not you want to admit it, SeeD military protocol does not apply to him!" he hissed.

Trepe's eyes were absolutely lit with fury. "SeeD or no, you failed to assume critical cover when it was requested."

"I didn't _fail_ to-"

Quistis raised her voice, pitch rising to match Brek's shout. "You _failed_ to follow procedure D-07 in a type F code, which is a type _A_ violation." snapped Quistis. "One that will outstrip you from SeeD faster than your father can draw his checkbook."

"They're not going to believe Almasy's story."

She smiled. "No. But they'll believe **mine**."

Realization dawned on Brek's face as the true nature of his predicament settled between his ears. Quistis could see the panic start to rise in his eyes. Almasy _wasn't_ dead, and Quistis had seen enough to report him to the board. There was no bank account within the Garek family fortune that was going to override failure to adhere to cover protocol, not when one of Balamb's 'Heroes' was doing the accusing.

A loud clatter caught Quistis' attention. Seifer had slumped forward, Hyperion slipping from his hand as his head lolled in his lap.

_Oh, shit._

Ignoring Brek for the moment, she knelt down in front of Seifer's slumped form, gently pressing a hand to his neck to locate the artery.

**No pulse.**

"Shit." Removing her gloves and tossing them aside, she tried once more to find a pulse, her fingers digging into his neck. A soft, erratic beat lay beneath one of her fingers, hammering quietly. She tilted his head up- blood trickled from his lips, eyes rolled back into his skull with only the whites visible.

"He's going into shock." She murmured, stretching her hands to his cheeks to begin healing him. Her body stiffened as Curaga channeled through her already tired veins, springing from her fingertips in a cold burst before soaking into Seifer's own veins. She felt his essence, briefly, in their exchange, the throbbing in his soul both weak and dark.

He was slipping.

Her veins were exhausted, screaming with every beat of blood that channeled through them. Her training told her it was too soon to cast again, but she ignored it, feeling the steel, painful drain course through her body as another spell was summoned to her fingertips.

_Once more._

The truck lurched again, and it took all her effort to keep both herself and Seifer grounded down.

"Seifer, **_come on_**." She bit back a gasp of pain as another icy rush channeled from her body. The brief connection that the spell allowed held itself held itself to his for a moment longer, pulling her down with him temporarily before her own feeling resurfaced. One of his eyes cracked open, the austere green gaze clearing for a moment in recognition.

Hands at her back suddenly, an arm curving around her throat as her hands were ripped from Seifer's huddled form.

"I don't think so, Instructor." Brek's breath was at her neck, harsh and hot. "Let him _die_."

"Let me **go**!" seethed Quistis. The truck rumbled, then squealed into another turn, sending both of them crashing into the wall. Brek maintained his hold, however, using the turn to force Quistis into the wall, her cheek pressed hard against the cold, clammy metal. She struggled, regarding Seifer's still motionless form with no little alarm.

"Look at that, Trepe. See that? **That's** justice."

Brek looked down on her from his vantage point, reaching down to pick up Hyperion's handle. The blade scraped sharply against the truck's grime filled bottom, wavering in the dim light as Brek held up the sword to point directly at the fallen young man. Seifer stirred, eyes mere emerald slits as he brought his head up to stare stupidly down the barrel of his own gunblade.

Quistis thought of yelling to Selphie or Xu, but that was no good. Between the barrier and the already loud ride, she wouldn't be heard. And, if they still had company, her shout would probably be taken into the wrong account.

Quistis tried to glare up at her retainer, with only minimal success. She had underestimated Brek's self-preservation. Cold fury at both herself and him raced through her veins, mixing with the exhaustion that already lingered there. It was an interesting combination, one that fueled shaking limbs to wait for an opening.

"I can see it now." Murmured Brek viciously, meeting eyes with Seifer. "Crazy lapdog turns gun on former Instructor. Fellow SeeD tries to intervene- gunshot is self-defense. Not a bad headline, is it?"

It was impossible to tell if he was bluffing or serious. Either way did not bode well for anyone.

Quistis saw her opportunity, swung around to catch Brek in the face with her fist and spun as he released his hold, sending him sprawling across the truck with a kick to the stomach. She started forward again, but found herself sprawled up against the side once more. Blinding red pain echoed through her already aching skull as she plunged into darkness.

…

…

..

Seifer leaned the Thundaga-fried arm against the cold metal side, trying to ease away the boiling pain in the throbbing limb even as his other arm prickled with a dull, acidic fire. His vision blurred, steadied, blurred again. His eyes rolled out of focus like marbles on cellophane, swimming like drunk fish in his sockets.

He glanced up through the dim light of the small metal leaks in the sides, trying to get his vision to stop blurring.

Quistis was saying something, Brek replying in yips that reminded Seifer of a small dog with hemorrhoids. He could barely make it out, but the conversation sounded fairly acrimonious.

Torn between pain and adrenaline, he tried to achieve a steady enough balance between the two to remain conscious. It was a losing battle, however, and he drifted in and out, his face and shoulder plastered to the side of the cold, filthy side of the truck. The adrenaline that had propelled he and Quistis down six flights of stairs was long gone.

**Fuck**...

Brek glared. "...Not a SeeD..."

Quistis, eyes mere sapphire slits in the shadows. "You won't be…"

Their words, however, seemed as soft as feathers with razor down, echoing in his head like whispers down a dark tunnel. Seifer fought to open his mouth, to yell at Trepe for defending him when he didn't need defending and to yell at Brek for being a fucking piece of shit, but nothing came out.

In fact, every time he opened his mouth, he felt like he was breathing **it** in.

Breathing _what_ in?

The **poison**…he _was breathing the dark in…._

Hyne, he was fucking sick. The truck's pale metal ceiling swam, and for a moment, he could swear he heard laughter. **Her** laughter, sharp and metallic against his ear. Very close...

Coughing, he struggled to stagger to his feet, the words being spoken in the truck coming into focus. Suddenly, Quistis darted forward, hands reaching out to him-

_His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, spinning, spinning...and suddenly, he could hear music far away, the distant echo of a piano not quite in tune. His eyes adjusted to the light to behold a giant chandelier, candles bright as stars. She was sitting at the piano, the graceful slope of her shoulders arcing with each soft press of the key. The music stopped, abruptly, and he felt a strangely empty echo in his chest. Her shoulders now shook with laughter... She turned, still half-hidden in the darkness the chandelier dared not touch._

_"I've been expecting you."_

_She was dressed in a crimson gown, a velvet v-cut sculpting tightly to her breasts. Her skin was pale, the veins around her eyes spreading back like thin tree branches. The yellow gleam in her eye was pure power, pure madness, and the lights behind her pupils drew him in and held him like a spider web. She held out her hand, smiling, claws curved in welcome. He backed away slowly, the last of the music fading from his soul._

_The last of her music._

_But she simply smiled and curled her finger, urging him forward with an insidious crook of bone, flesh, and claw. The music swelled once again, alive and terrible in the echo of her laughter._

_"Little puppet...dance for me."_

He tore himself away, ripped open his eyes-

-And nearly screamed.

The garbage was crawling, the moistened filth becoming a sea of maggots at his feet, wriggling against his legs and arms. He recoiled, struggling to stand up, but the sea of worms was taking shape, squirming, teeming masses coiling into the shape of a hand winding around his foot. He dropped Hyperion at his feet, heard the sword's distant clamor and heard Quistis' voice rise in panic.

He was going down, **down**...He tried desperately to clear his vision, to get to his feet. He shook his head, fumbled for Hyperion's handle in an attempt to hoist himself back up, kicking at the horrible incarnation that bound him. Blood and bile rose in his throat and he choked for air, choked on the maggots, and they were everywhere, in his eyes, his mouth, his nose-

The pain was fading, the slow, cold feel of his body being dragged down farther and farther down the dark lake that writhed with worm-like shadows. He fell deeper, and the dark waves lapped up to pull him further, further towards the distant pin of light at its bottom-

"Seifer, wake up."

His stomach retreated to coil around his spine as a chilling wave crashed through him, sending his heart leaping up like a kite in a damned tornado. His brain twisted, darkness distorting to a swirling drain that was sucking him up.

Up, and up, and he was climbing so high, and so fast, it felt like he was going to hit the fucking ceiling of whatever lay above-

"..._Seifer_." Quistis' voice. Seifer opened his eyes, hazy vision blurring to make out her form.

**Darkness.**

_"Wake up, Seifer_."

Seifer heard Quistis' distant shout, a sound that broke through the dim haze of the nothing and startled him back into the back of the garbage truck. His arm was burning, the heat spreading into his neck and inching upward. It felt like the fucking pain was crawling into his brain, a slow seeping warmth that was a madness not his own, but a familiar madness all the same

"...you worthless fuck!" Seifer's eyes snapped open once more, only to look down Hyperion's silver barrel, the tip mere inches from his skull, Quistis detained by an arm around her neck and Brek at his sword's handle.

Perhaps Brek had the balls after all.

Seifer grimaced. His arm was hurting even worse now, the throbbing slowly making its way to his brain again.

_Shit_...

Quistis lunged suddenly, catching Brek in the face with her fist. Brek stumbled back in surprise, but his arm rose just as quickly, glancing her across the skull with Hyperion's handle on the way back. She crumpled against the side-

_Darkness._ _Sweet darkness._

_…_

_…_

_…_

Quistis opened her eyes to a dim, insistent clanging, the repetitive sound of bell cleanly struck. She stumbled to pick herself up, groggy, bracing herself up against the side of the truck as she forced her eyes open.

Nothing could have prepared her for what met her eyes.

Seifer was standing in front of her, injured arm extended. On the other end lay Brek Garek, whose skull was currently being slammed into the metal wall like a sack of pillows. His forehead was already bubbling with blood, and another stain graced his pants that had nothing to do with a flesh injury.

Quistis staggered to her feet, clutching at Seifer's arm and trying not to lose her balance. It was no easy task, considering the truck hadn't stopped swerving since it started.

She tried to pry Seifer's arm off Brek's neck, but the muscle was solid, steeled in a permanent flex as Seifer deepened his fingers in the now terrified man's neck. Brek gurgled, futilely attempting to claw himself free. Despite his squirming, however, his eyes seemed fixed in terror, unblinking as he stared down at Seifer in what seemed like disbelief. Seifer's own eyes were fixed, clouded with a darkness she had only seen once before...at the witch's side.

_He's going to kill him,_ she thought numbly.

"Seifer, stop!" Quistis shouted, once again shoving at him with enough might to throw all three off balance.

Seifer blinked, dropping Brek in a tangle of coughs and gasps as the other man scrambled through the filth to get away from his would-be killer. Quistis was bent over, trying to catch her breath and her wits, and Seifer simply stood, confused, at the sight before him, staring at his hand as if it were some foreign thing that had betrayed him.

What the **fuck** had just happened?

"He's fucking crazy!" screamed a now very hoarse Brek, clutching at his throat as if his clawing would reopen the swollen passageway.

Quistis gave him a look of pure malice. "**He's** crazy! **You** just-"

All three jumped as the back hatch slammed open, revealing one very angry Xu and one extremely harried Selphie.

"Those escaped prisoners tried to run us off the road," spat Xu. "They disappeared when we ran into town."

"We lost them, despite my excellent driving," added Selphie ruefully.

Seifer scowled. With Selphie driving, he was surprised they weren't riding on the fucking wheel caps by now. Judging by a glance at the truck, though, they weren't far off.

"What the fuck were you doing back there?" scowled Xu. The three half stood, half crouched before her, all covered in garbage and all wearing agitated expressions of various magnitudes.

"Trying to stay standing," replied Quistis evenly, daring Brek out of the corner of her eye to contradict her. The young man returned her glare, but thankfully, shut his mouth. She knew he wouldn't. Even with Seifer's own extremely evident attack on his person, (bruise marks were already staining the young man's neck), she still had enough procedural ammo to demote him faster than a Torama in heat. He couldn't report Seifer without reporting himself in the process.

They were locked in an uneasy truce, if one could even call it that.

The five gathered on the dimly lit floor of the station, staring at the truck before them. The right side had been completely smashed in, and the passenger-side window was peppered with spider web fracture. The tires still smelled faintly of smoke, and the engine, though off, still made a tinkling sound, as if the piston was trying to dislodge itself from the engine block.

Selphie folded her arms, craning her head to the side as she surveyed the new and improved model. "Hmmmm...think they'll notice?"

The front bumper chose that moment to clatter to the floor.

…

…

…

…

Seifer leaned over the sink, spitting another mouthful of blood into the basin and watching the pale red froth crawl down the drain like a slug. He ran his tongue along the sides of his teeth, making sure no crucial molars were missing. His tongue flattened along the silky curtain of his cheek, gingerly flicking across the large portion of his mouth that somewhere along the line he'd chewed to bloody chunks. So that was the source of the blood. Some of it, anyway.

His lip was still cut, split down the middle and still bubbling with blood. His head throbbed with a distant, cold beat, indicating that his veins were still rich with healing magic. Fat lot of good it did him- both his arms still felt like hell frozen over.

The pain was _that_ fucking impossible.

He still couldn't make sense of the previous few hours. He remembered drifting in and out of consciousness, gagging and shivering and hallucinating...Quistis' hands on his face and being cold...Brek hitting Quistis...after that, he'd pretty much blacked out, and come to slamming Brek's head against the garbage door walls, with Quistis trying to pry him off, eyes filled with fear. Mentally, he shrugged to himself. It wasn't as if killing Brek wasn't on his to do list, but shit...

Nothing was making sense anymore.

Swearing as he spit again, he ran his hand through his now wet hair as he cleared the fog from the mirror with the other. The whole muggy bathroom now stunk with a mixture of sticky sweet hotel shampoo and bland, generic hotel soap. At least he didn't smell like garbage anymore, although the garbage smell hadn't given him a headache the way the shampoo stench did.

He dropped the towel, rolling his shoulders before bending over to shuffle through his hastily packed duffle bag to find the only clean pair of pants he had left that didn't reek of garbage.

He glanced through the crack in the door, which allowed him an angled view of the small bedroom. The rooms were as sticky-sweet as the rest of the fucking town, filled with colorful hook rugs and cheap, happy watercolors that made his eyes hurt. The flowered sheets and curtains looked like they burst right out of some fucking inbred housewife magazine. If anything else 'cute' occurred in the room, he was going to snap.

Quistis was still lying down on the bed, an arm draped over her face, her stomach rising and falling shallowly in what might have been sleep as her legs dangled over the bed. She had been passed out the moment they got into the room- he had noticed Selphie helping her up the stairs, murmuring worriedly. If Quistis was accepting help, she was more than a little tired. She was sick.

He could still hear Xu on the radio with Cid through the door that connected the two rooms, her voice low and even more serious than usual. Selphie was still pacing between the two rooms, and Hyne knew and Hyne cared where the fuck Brek was.

Sighing, he ran the events of the past hours through his head, allowing the thoughts to churn through the pounding and pain of the rest of his body and provide him a half-assed distraction as he cupped more water to his lips, trying to rinse out the salty taste of the blood. It didn't bother him that he didn't know where half of it was coming from. Much.

Seifer spit a last time into the sink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he straightened. Reluctantly, he brought his eyes up to the mirror, only half-expecting what he saw there. His eyes narrowed a little as he raised a ginger hand to touch his shoulder.

His casting arm looked as he expected it to- the entire arm swarmed with discolored bruises, a red flush to the skin near the wrist where the spell had stalled. That would fade in time, but in the meantime, he wouldn't be casting anything above a level one spell without refrying his veins like bacon strips. Mentally, he swore off any Thunder variations for the rest of his natural life, however long (or short) that happened to be.

The opposite shoulder, however, was the shocking part. It had only a small pink scar where the bullet wound originally was, the pinkish tinge around it the only indication that it was a new wound. Amazingly, as his fingers brushed the skin's taut surface, the ache seemed vanish altogether.

He felt...**fine**.

**_"Got you."_**

Seifer jerked his head up, only to stare at his own reflection in the mirror. In fact, both the rooms seemed to have gone quiet. He could no longer make out Xu's voice, nor could he hear the drone of the small television in the other room. Seifer frowned, then pulled a clean white t-shirt over his head, securing the buckle on his pants as he pushed the door open.

He nearly collided with Selphie, who nearly tripped over her own two feet as she righted herself and paced around him. She seemed skittish, her abundant energy out of place and erratic...even for her.

Then again, he didn't exactly feel calm and collected himself.

"We're going to go downstairs. Are you coming?" Selphie, hesitating in the doorway. He looked over at Quistis, regarding her prone form on the bed. Selphie mirrored his gaze with a worried one of her own.

Seifer shrugged. "I'll stay here." Selphie nodded, then proceeded to pace out of the room, apparently lost in thought and quiet in a very uncharacteristic way. Things must be serious, if even Selphie was feeling dampening effects of things to come.

Brek followed after, eyes fairly frothing with hate as he passed him by. Seifer remained standing, eyes narrowed in similar fashion. The bruises were deepening on Brek's neck, turning a dark blue.

_Keep walking_, thought Seifer to himself. _Or I'll finish it for you._

Seifer kept his eyes on Brek until the young man's form left the room, and even then, his body took its sweet time in relaxing.

Xu walked into the room, running her fingers through her recently cleaned hair. "Feeling better, Almasy?"

Seifer cast her a sardonic smile as he tucked his shirt into his pants. "Didn't know you cared, Xu."

"I don't," replied the squad leader, regarding him with an even stare. "I'm just relieved Quistis didn't ending up wasting her time and energy on your sorry sad ass."

"As always, Xu, your words warm my heart." He drawled.

She snorted. "I didn't know you had one."

"Very original". He mused. "And a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?"

Xu's eyes fairly flickered with spite.

He inclined his head towards Quistis, breaking from their spar for the moment. It was no matter. He could annoy the shit out of Xu anytime. "The hell's wrong with her?"

Xu gave him a stony look over her shoulder, pausing mid-stride. "She over-cast herself on you, Almasy, although why anyone would want to save your ass is beyond me."

He frowned. "What?"

"Are you deaf? She pumped you so full of support magic, she nearly killed herself. She's sick. She's got mag-poisoning. Happy?"

He snapped, folding his arms as he regarded his ex-instructor's sleeping form, resentfulness and some other nameless emotion burning under his skin. "It's her own fucking fault, not mine. I never asked to be her charity case."

The points of light in Xu's dark eyes fairly bored into his skull. "My best friend nearly killed herself today by breaking protocol to save _your_ ass. It wouldn't kill you to display some gratitude, for a change, assuming it's in you." She turned fully to face him, accusation in her dark eyes. "And don't think I don't know that more than balance was going on back there in the truck today."

He remained silent, returning her stare with as much venom as his tired body could muster. Admittedly, it wasn't much.

Xu cast one glance at the bed. "I've given her a potion drought and a couple aspirin. She's been throwing up since we got back. Don't bother her."

Seifer shrugged. "Wasn't planning on it."

"Oh, and Seifer? If she's not better when we get back, you'll be sucking your balls through a straw."

"**Lovely** imagery." he sneered after her, but wound up talking to a slammed door instead.

He paced for a while before he realized he looked like Selphie and stopped at the small window, gazing out as the last shreds of twilight bid farewell to the sun in velvet shades of crimson and ginger. The scene was oddly calming, even in the face of such a tumultuous day. Cid was apparently dealing with the mayor of Tromedia, who was extremely upset about his the heap of rubble that now graced the outskirts of his town. He was already demanding compensation, and that was _before_ he'd heard about the waste management truck, although that couldn't be directly linked to them.

It didn't look good for Cid, at any rate.

Seifer stood until his legs ached, until a gentle sigh from the bed turned his attention. He turned, nearly tripping over the wastebasket that had apparently become Quistis' vomit receptacle in the last few hours. It was nearly full- Seifer noticed with disgust that there were flecks of blood in it. He took the thing to the bathroom, flushing the contents down the toilet and rinsing the bucket out in the shower. He supposed in hindsight it was disgusting, but really, he'd seen worse.

He eased himself down on the edge of the bed, springs creaking beneath him. He winced, afraid of waking her.

She murmured something unintelligible, dropping her arm from her face, but thankfully, her eyes remained closed. Instead of waking up, she rolled the half of her body on the bed over to face him, curling her fist up by her face in a child-like gesture, the other hand splayed across the sheets, palm up. Her hair, which had long ago fallen out of her clip, spilled onto her cheeks like silk, basking in the light from the hideously-colored tiffany lamp on the bedside table. She looked like a sick child.

He saw the bruises on her wrists, and winced. Blue, flame-like wisps cut up her arms, curling light wisps of wing along her pale skin that reached her upper arms. Ruptured veins like that were the result of the stress magic applied to the veins, a reminder of human fragility regarding something greater than itself. Mag-poisoning.

Why the fuck did she save him? Why didn't she just leave him, like everyone else had, give up on an already hopeless case? It was so much easier to fail when no one else expected you to achieve anything. All he wanted to do was sink deeper into the pit of despair he'd carved out for himself, and here she was, dragging him out, dragging him up.

Aside from Edea, no one had ever really believed in him. Fujin and Rajin had been too blind with hero-worship, and Rinoa...the foolish girl had never really known him at all.

He and Quistis had been alike, even as children. Both stubborn, both driven, both desperate for affection. Only she had grown wings, flown away to a new family, rising to a successful career.

It seemed he'd spent his entire life chewing whatever wings he had _off_.

He reached out, carefully, and tucked a strand of her hair behind the tender curve of an ear, reaching back to disentangle the loose clip from her hair. His touch was uncharacteristically gentle. He had always been careless, too careless- breaking things, times, places, people...he was not gentle, or kind, he was a hurricane that cut across people and places and left regret in his wake.

His fingers tightened around the barrette, eyes rising to flicker over her sleeping form.

He had never seen her sleep before.

He took in the exotic cut of her eyes, smooth cheekbones, lips soft and pink like crushed rose petals, eyes dark and soft like mined sapphire when open, darker like a tempest when she was angry. The graceful slope of her hip flared out into legs that seemed to stretch out for miles, and the way she carried herself, proud but not haughty, graceful but not presumptuous. Trepe was a paradox: intelligent and equally naive, assertive but doubly unsure of herself, a wounded dove that dragged her pride like a broken wing behind her...

His eyes narrowed.

He looked down at the clip in his hand. It was a polished obsidian oval, mother of pearl engraved beneath the gloss in a fancy, meaningless shape. Absently, he set it on the dresser.

He eased her boots off, dropping each one with a quiet clunk onto the hardwood floor beneath and gently placing her feet back up on the mattress. He pulled the other half of the cover over her, leaning close enough to feel the heat radiate from her small form.

He wanted to hate her more than anything in that moment, and hated that he didn't.

Her eyes cracked open, an almost velvet indigo that shimmered in the light. "Seifer...what..."

His eyes narrowed, studying her as the soft wind of her breath fanned over his lips. She stared up at him, calmly, mind still hazy from sleep otherwise she probably would have slapped him for being too close…for seeing her like this…

But she wasn't slapping him, she was just staring at him with the strangest look in her eyes...almost like she wanted him there.

"Go to sleep." He muttered, harsher than he meant to, and jerked abruptly away to walk across the room and yank open the door.

"Shit." He muttered, not for the first time, trying hard not to slam the door behind him and only half succeeding.

…

…

…

The hotel bar was a poor excuse for a room, much less a bar. It was practically a sunken living room with swivel stools and shag carpet, all dimly lit by cheap orange lighting. The clink of glasses and the low murmur of a couple of stragglers was the only noise aside from a bad jazz record running over old scratches.

He'd been somewhat relieved at running into Selphie on the stairway. He knew she'd watch over Quistis- from what he remembered from childhood, she used to beat up Zell so she could doctor him. Twisted little thing, Selphie. Really, he was just glad that Quistis wouldn't be alone with Garek in the room. He didn't trust that kid on about a million levels. Brek might perpetuate the image of a stupid rich kid, but the guy had a self-preservation streak a mile wide, underlined with an underhandedness that reminded Seifer of a skinny, egg-stealing weasel that chattered around nests until the big birds had gone. Brek was not by any stretch of the imagination an intrepid soul; however, he was an opportunist. Those were the personality types that burned villages, raped and pillaged- not out of necessity or insanity, but out of chance.

Seifer glanced behind him several times, making sure that the scary woman with the multiple chins was nowhere in sight. He wedged through a set of tables to advance to the end of the bar, but another figure caught his eye. The shadow sat in the back, trench coat hanging off the stool behind crossed high-cut military boots. Short, dark hair bobbed forward and back as the figure raised a shot glass to their lips, drank, then pushed it forward for another with the speed of a sailor. Xu.

He chuckled, taking a seat next to her, noting with amusement the way her glare turned sideways at him. "I'll have what he's having," he called to the bartender, gesturing at Xu with his thumb. The one-eyed man (who looked to have about as many teeth), muttered to himself and simply slid the bottle across the counter.

Xu tipped another back. "Funny."

Seifer shrugged. "Shit, you drink like one. Do you piss standing up, too?"

"I'm going to ignore your pathetic attempt to include me in your equally pitiable men's club." Replied Xu. "Is there a purpose to your presence?"

"You come here to drink to your mission success?" he chuckled, deliberately poking at a newly sore spot.

"Eat shit and die." Replied Xu, downing another shot and grimacing only slightly.

"You must be running out of clever comebacks in that insult manual of yours." Seifer took the shot handed to him, studying the amber colored liquid as it swirled in the small glass shot. He hadn't had a drink since...

Nevermind.

He paused, regarding her with a new look- curiosity, and Xu found she much preferred the standard contempt to the new sensation that crawled along her skin in response to his gaze. She felt like a bug under a magnifying glass in the desert, just waiting for the heat of another one of Almasy's prods.

"You're a woman of purpose, aren't you Xu? Ever just enjoy something that didn't make any sense?"

Xu turned the stool, facing him. "**Did** you come down here to deliberately annoy the living shit out of me?"

"No, although it is an agreeable consolation prize."

Xu turned back to the bar. "You're a sick man, Almasy."

"This from a walking phallic symbol dressed up like an Amazon."

"You've got one fucked up notion of ambition." Snarled Xu. "Still, I suppose success must look peculiar from the slums of failure."

Seifer sighed. "Listen. You're gonna have to get drunk, Xu. REALLY drunk."

Xu cast him a look that was nothing short of venomous.. "And why's that, Almasy? I doubt you'll sound any smarter, or more successful-"

He leaned forward, eyes flicking conspirationally. "Actually, I was thinking along the lines of killing whatever giant bug crawled up your ass."

Xu's eyes darkened and Seifer awarded her a wicked smile as he leaned back, folding his hands behind his head and stretching till his shoulders popped.

"You know," observed Xu, "I think I liked you better as a kicked dog. This misplaced sense of confidence is really irritating."

The ex-knight just chuckled, slamming his own shot back and tossing the glass back onto the counter. The burning coursed through him, spreading warmth throughout his formerly cold form, restoring feeling to his numb limbs. It was a familiar flame, a sweet warmth that mixed a bitter aftertaste on his brain, stinging just a little like sick regret.

At one time, it was the only feeling he'd had in his body.

He gave her a very mocking half-bow, lowering his eyes just long enough to bring them back up with a double dose of scorn. "Xu, Mistress of the Comeback. Still riding so high on that power trip of yours?"

Xu's hand curled around her glass with a white-knuckle grip as she slammed it back down. "Fuck you."

"Language like that does not become a lady." His eyes traversed the length of her form, mocking. "Oh, wait, nevermind."

Xu seethed to herself, imagining what the bottle would look like embedded in his skull. It didn't look bad. "Your witticism is astounding. Really." She muttered. A pause. "How's Quistis?"

"Sleeping."

"She'd better be."

Seifer refilled his shot himself, sliding the half-empty bottle back onto the oiled wood counter. "Really, Xu, what's with the pity drinking?"

"Why do _you_ give a shit?"

"Why do you confuse apathetic curiosity with sympathy?" muttered Seifer, eyes narrowing.

Xu paused. In her eyes, Seifer was many things, but he wasn't pretentious. He could be counted on to tell the truth (if one would find his blunt, scathing honesty and equally corrosive personality assessments to be a redeeming quality at all). Seeing as Quistis and Selphie were most likely knocked out for the night and Brek was another likely candidate for her wrath, Xu decided there were worse things in the universe than conversation with Seifer Almasy.

Not many, granted.

"Well, for starters, the IGCS is completely destroyed, along with all of those soldiers-"

"Which just happened to be trying to split our skulls, if you remember," added Seifer.

"-all of those soldiers, who happened to be wearing _maintenance_ uniforms and face shields," continued Xu with has much patience as she could muster in his presence. "There's a record of our presence at the hotel...leaving us looking like awfully big subjects for both espionage and terrorism. To top it off, relations have been tense with Galbadia because of Cid's public opposition to Martine's reinstatement, so it's going to be difficult to assert our innocence. We're going to have to report to the higher ups, and they're going to call a meeting of the Garden Council. Surely these implications cannot escape even _you_."

"The hell's the Garden Council?" It sounded like more politics, which most likely weren't going to help the situation much.

"Where the hell have you been? A hole?"

He shrugged. "Pretty much, yeah."

"The Garden Council is a collection of representatives from each of the three Gardens, the Headmaster's themselves, and the leaders of the towns represented by the Gardens. The board will resolve the conflict." Replied Xu, resting her hand on her chin.

"So basically, you're saying we're fucked." Surmised Seifer, frowning.

"Seeing as all our evidence is now destroyed, gone, or now simply word of mouth, I'd say things aren't looking good, no." Agreed Xu.

"What's the worst they can do?"

"Revoke or suspend military privileges, put a cap on our cadet size or our spending, or possibly, fire Cid...or me." Sighed Xu.

Seifer leaned back against the bar, letting out an empty chuckle. "Huh. You _are_ fucked."

Xu simply glared, throwing some gil on the counter as she stood and collected her coat form the stool, looking for all the world like she was going to rip the stool from its bolts and beat him with it. "I swear, it's Quistis' happiness that keeps you alive, Almasy."

His scowl deepened, wrinkling the dark pink scar above his sulkily knit brows. "What the hell do _I_ have to do with her happiness?"

Xu rolled her eyes as she walked out the door. "Believe me, I have _no_ idea."

Seifer spent that night staring at the cracked ceiling of 22B, listening to Brek pretend to sleep, letting the concept of happiness mull through his mind as he listened for movement in the dark within the room-

_…and the dark within himself._


	20. Peaches, Politics, and Premonitions

Did you guys ever wonder what Ultimecia meant when she seduced Seifer at the station? All those references to broken dreams and skeleton boys got my brain churning about what kind of terrible childhood Seifer must have had pre-Matron. I warn you, thar be angst ahead.

Disclaimer: the whole 'flash' interlude in Quistis' dream wasn't my idea. I have no idea where it comes from- my friend has it up in his AIM profile and I suppose it's either a song or a strange poem, but at any rate, I stole it from him or someone else. The blood-brain reference is from Robin Williams, and in Chapter 16, when Seifer suggests that Xu drink a whole hell of a lot to kill the 'bug' up her ass, that's from Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment (one of my favorite mushy movies- I recommend it!). Just wanted to mention that so nobody thinks I really meant to steal that wonderful little scene without giving credit where credit is due.

**Chapter Politics, Peaches, and Premonitions**

_"I Bleach The Sky_

_Every Night  
Loaded On Wrong  
And Further From Right  
Spinning Around  
Two Howling Moons  
'cause They're Always There  
Whatever I Do"_

-Bush, Little Things

**_Quistis…_**

_Save the Queen's handle burned in her hand as the tall grasses of the field whipped against her legs. She closed her eyes, the gentle wind caressing her face and tangling in her hair like the fingers of a lover. The flowers, heavy with fragrance and latent dew, bowed their heads in the gentle wind, the grasses calling up a whisper as the breeze whirred through their weighty stalks._

_It was peaceful here, and yet, even in the calm, she could sense an approaching storm. The faint electricity prickled across her skin like gooseflesh, rising up in her like a dread she could not explain or calm. Her hand closed tighter around the firm, familiar leather in her palm. _

**_Quistis…._**

_The murmur seemed part of the wind, a whisper that teased her ears as it blew by._

_The wind picked up in response to the sound, a now almost painful whip against her calves. Her hair broke loose, and curled in stinging wisps around her face._

_Petals, torn from their flowers, spiraled up in the wind like helicopters. Dandelion puffs, caught up in the wind's ruthless onslaught, were blown apart, the delicate sphere releasing its seeds in one violent explosion. The puffs blew up, higher and higher at the wind's mercy, disappearing into the now crimson sky._

_She felt an emptiness at watching them go. She reached for them, her hand closing around air._

_A rumbling ensued, just then, and the earth trembled like a frightened child beneath her feet._

**_Quistis_**_……_

_…….the wind whispered, as the rumbling increased, a call that stretched low and thin along the fields like a distant murmur._

**_Quistis_**_…_

_Her wrist jerked, and she looked down to see Save the Queen break lose from her grip, only to spiral up into the wind in a coiling throng of leather and hiss. Panicking, she chased after it, watching it coil like the tail of a kite._

_She tore up the small slope of the hill, following the sparkling barbs of her whip as they trailed down over the emerald crest. Her whip lay still now, in spite of the breeze, coiled up as still and as harmless as an unwielded whip should be. She stopped at the top, looking down in wonder at what she saw._

_The dandelion puffs, the dry, dead brown seeds carried on wings of down, were all migrating in the violent winds, whirring around a single grandfather clock that stood half embedded in the emerald blanket of grass. As she watched with a mixture of horror and fascination, the dials on the clock began to slide backwards, faster and faster until her eyes could no longer keep track of the spinning._

_Time._

_The grass spiraled up in response, and then the dirt, the violent frenzy a distant roar in her ears as she struggled to grasp at anything…anything…but the world was coming apart and the dust was in her eyes, and the handle of her whip was becoming so very hot…and she couldn't hold it, not her whip or her thoughts or her heart as she was spiraled up, the world lurching in her stomach and yet, still, she heard the voice across the field, calling her, insistently, like a low, constant throb in her temple. It was the calm in the chaos, and she reached for it, shouting, grasped in the earth's fury and-_

_Grasped at the grey sleeve of a retreating trenchcoat, missing. She blinked._

**_Flash_**_._

_A streak of light tore across her eyes, blinding her. She scrambled back against a large pillar, shrank from the shouts in the shadows-_

**_Open your eyes._**

_She was sitting in a pile of sand, carefully shaping the wet clumps into towers and bridges, using one of Matron's mixing bowls to make turtle shell backs before tracing in the intricate patterns of the shell with a stick. A shadow wavered behind her. She knew without looking up who the shadow belonged to._

_"Why do you bother, anyways? It's just gonna get wrecked by the water."_

_She squinted up at him, up at the bleached blonde hair, angry green eyes, and the tanned face shadowed by the sun._

_"So? It's pretty."_

_"Yeah.__ It's a pretty big **stupid** waste of time."_

_Anger flared. "**You're** stupid!"_

_"Nuh-uh.__ You're just mad 'cause I'm right. Tomorrow you're gonna come out here and cry like a baby 'cause the waves ate all your dumb sand."_

_She paused, a handful of wet sand pressed tightly in her palm. She looked out to the waves, narrowing her eyes. He was right. _

_She shook her head. "Am not."_

_He laughed. "Are too. You're gonna sit out here and be a big crybaby, 'cause nothing you do matters."_

_"Seifer Almasy, you shut up!"_

_He just smiled, the ghost of a sneer she would later recognize in the man._

_"You're just gonna build sandcastles your whole life, aren'tcha, cryin' by the waves."_

_"And what're **you** gonna be, huh?" The sand was crumbling in her fist._

_He looked out at the water. His eyes were too serious for his age. "I'm gonna be a knight, n' save people."_

_Suddenly he raised his foot, and with swift justice, he crushed her labors with the flat of his sandal. A shell drawbridge that had taken her hours alone shattered, a coral tower smashed into the mucky moat, and most of her crab peasants joined them in the now demolished magic-sand-castle site. Hurt flashed through her, accompanied by a swift flush of rage only he seemed to be able to stir._

_He grinned at her. "See? I saved it from the waves." With that, he ran._

_She chased after him, tears blurring her vision and hands full of sand as she did her very best to get to get a shot at his eye. But he eluded her. He always did._

_The sand sifted through her fingers, sifting into the wind. Sadly, she watched it go. She watched him go._

**_Flash_**_…_

_She was standing in a well- lit classroom, her impressive Blueboard stretched out behind her and the glorious feeling of success running heavy in her veins as she stared out at her class, **her** class, a sea of expectant faces that still bore the excitement of new prospective cadets. She looked down at her role call sheet, tapping her pen against the clipboard. She noticed out of the corner of her eye the familiar figure of a boy sitting towards the back, the memorable shock of soft brown hair sloping down in front of his eyes even as those same piercing blue orbs rested indifferently on hers. Squall Leonhart…….present._

_Her eyes flickered next to a pair of black boots, resting comfortably on top of the computer monitor._

_"Excuse me, I'll ask you to remove your feet from the desk cadet-"_

_"Seifer Almasy," replied the green-eyed figure behind the boots. A few giggles emerged from the back from behind the eyes of some doe-eyed young girls, eyes glimmering appreciatively as they took in the new 'rebellious' student. Quistis was instantly annoyed at the  foolish twits that were still so immersed the childhood and awe for rebellion she herself had been denied (or denied herself). Perhaps more bitterness than scorn lingered behind that dislike, however. She could never be certain._

_"Fine.__ **Seifer**. Take your feet off the desk."_

_"Of course, Instructor."__ He complied, slowly, in a I'll-do-whatever-I-damn-well-please manner and grinning like the devil himself. His eyes were narrowed mischievously, bright with mirth and the cocky confidence of being young, virile, and full of testosterone. They seemed strangely searching as well, flickering a little as they met hers. Apparently not finding what he was looking for, he sank back in his desk, arm casually draped over the chair. _

_She pretended to ignore him as her cheeks flushed with fury behind the clipboard. "Seifer Almasy……..**present**." She nearly crushed the tip of her pen with the check mark._

_It was only the beginning……..or rather, the continuation of their ongoing battle. She would not remember their childhood together until many years later, till the GF-generated amnesia faded from her memory enough to recall cloudless days of being chased by sandy-haired boys through whispering fields._

_She now got the feeling their battle had never ended at all, just picked up where it left off._

_She built up her dreams, and he destroyed them…before she could do it herself._

**_Flash_**_._

_Seifer in confinement, before the Timber fiasco. Before Rinoa and President Deling and the world on fire._

_The disciplinary room, white walls boxing her in with the most infuriating person on earth.__ He sat across from her, tapping his boot against the floor, Hyperion leaning against the wall. He did not look contrite, apologetic, or remorseful- he looked impatient. "When can I go?"_

_"Soon, I hope," she replied, barely glancing up from her papers._

_He smiled at her distress, drank her tears like some surreal creature that thirsted for suffering. "Careful, Instructor. You'll hurt my feelings." he mused._

_"I doubt you have any," she snapped. _

_To her surprise, he got to his feet._

_"What do you think you're doing?" She tried to sound indignant, authorative. But with Quistis, her composure relied on her isolation…her personal space from others. Invade that space, and she became restless and rattled. She knew this, and so did Seifer._

_He advanced on her in the tiny space, and she stood up. The wall pressed up against her back, the metal lip of the chalkboard digging into her spine, and the pain made her aware of just how hard she was attempting to get away from him. _

_"Get away from me." She snarled, the rattle of a cornered animal._

_"Do you know why you hate me, Trepe?" he asked, the sneer never leaving his face._

_She tried to get past him, but he put out an arm, slamming it into the wall with enough force to surprise her into backing up once more. The wall rattled._

_"Do you know _**why**_?" he repeated._

_She glared at him, balling her hands into fists._

_He continued, patiently. "Because you're a coward."_

_Furious, she reached out with her right hand to rake it across his cheek, only to find her wrist caught in his gloved hand. The leather felt warm wrapped around her own bare skin. _

_"Take your hands off me. You're in enough trouble already, don't you think?"_

_His eyes did not waver, and he did not release her._

_"Oh, I don't mean you're a coward in the sense of fighting. You'll go out swinging with the rest of those fucking sheep." He spat the last word out as if it were poisoned. "No. You're afraid of yourself. Afraid of the dark, afraid that if you look hard enough, you'll see that you're just like all of them, You hate me because I'm **not** like them. Because I'm not like you." He smirked, glaring down at her from the bend of his elbow above her head. _

_"If you put as much effort into becoming something as you do in tormenting others, you'd be SeeD by now. You'd **be** something, instead of a failure." She spat at him, ashamed to find the tears were now nearly brimming over onto her cheeks. It wouldn't do to let him see her cry. She'd rather kill herself then shed a single tear of sad sustenance for the sorrow-hungry moth in front of her._

_"That's **your** ambition, Trepe- jumping through all their fucking hoops, playing all their games and begging on your knees for the flavor of the week they're selling out to every half-brain who can fire a gun. Not mine."_

_She was angry now, angry enough to hold her ground and return his glare with equal fervor. "I think **you're** scared. Scared of becoming something, scared that you can't. I think that you're scared that you'll never be able to compete with Squall, and that's why you can't stand to-"_

_"**Fuck** Squall!" he shouted, slamming his hand into the wall just inches from her head. She jumped, and papers and books spilled to the ground. There was a dangerous gleam to his eyes now, one born of ambition and a hatred so deep she could scarcely see the bottom of it. "Not everything is about Squall, can't you see that?"_

_She felt with shock the soft, leather tip of his thumb run across her lower lip, eyes flickering, searching hers for what, she had no idea. He spoke quietly, as if affirming the words to himself as well as her. "You're so fucking blind, Instructor. You don't hear the train till it's two feet from you, do you?" He leaned closer, and she could feel his breath on her cheeks and his presence so warm, she found her livid muscles relaxing in reluctant acquiescence. For a moment, she thought……_

_To this day she didn't know what she thought._

_His eyes narrowed. "You're just like the rest of them. A deaf little sheep walking on train tracks."_ _He withdrew, and the anger wandered somewhere else in him. "Fuck this place. I'm going."_

_She took a shuddering breath, then gathered her bearings enough to chase after him._

_He was right. She never saw the train coming._

**_Flash_**_.._

_Shadows played on his face, lighting the madness in his eyes in short, disturbing waves. Her shouts fell on distant ears, and she was forced to watch, helpless, as Hyperion's wicked point lingered dangerously close to a terrified Deling._

_She had lost him. She had lost him…_

_…….she had never really had him at all._

_Suddenly, he turned, sharply, eyes focusing on the woman at the same time hers did. Strange woman, dressed completely in black, mask and shadow obscuring her features as she materialized seemingly from the shadows herself. She stepped forward, stance fearless, eerie, dark hair glittering down her back like a sheet of silk._

_Quistis felt her heart strain in her chest, reaching for some long forgotten memory, but it was lost as soon as the feeling surfaced, gone too fast to grab._

_This woman was a turnkey for…….**something**. Her presence raised the hairs on Quistis' arms, a static crackle that disquieted her blood._

_She saw Seifer's hesitation, saw his feet move back, President Deling in tow. His eyes were wary, intense, the knit of his brow making him look like a lost little boy. The woman saw it, too, and pressed forward._

_She spoke, and she spoke with promise, with confidence….words tender and cruel all at once, balming and cutting.._

_And they all stood around as she seduced him……..and did nothing._

_To them, he was lost already._

_A low chuckle.__ From her vantage point, Quistis saw the woman's eyes gleam like diamond shards as a sneer turned her pretty lips._

_The woman reached out her hand. Quistis held her breath. Seifer paused, eyes mesmerized, staring at her, gunblade lowered slowly to his side. Deling struggled free, stumbling from the room in a blind panic._

_"Take my hand, Seifer. Follow me to a place of no return." Her voice was gentle, soothing……_

_And he took her hand, and let her clasp it, leading him out like a small child back into the folds of dark curtains and shadows. The darkness blurred, came all around her, and they were gone._

_"Seifer, no!" she shouted, starting forward and reaching out her hand. _

_But it was too late. She grasped only shadows._

_………He eluded her still._

**_Flash_**_._

_She was back in the field, and the wind whispered at her ankles. She saw Edea again, hair spiraling behind her; not Edea, but a dark figure against the stormy backdrop, her eyes thick with poison._

_Seifer was at her side, Hyperion's bloody blade dripping darkness onto the grass, eyes glittering with shades of dusk as he smiled up at her.__ And Garden…….Garden was torn open behind them both, fiery, blood-like fire oozing from the side accompanied by billows of black smoke, screams rising up towards the heavens._

_The clock was spinning now, faster, and faster, and it was making her dizzy. She had to help them. _

_She had to help him._

_There wasn't much time…………._

_…………**There is never enough time**…………._

_She held out her hand, calling him to come back. He turned, gray trench coat billowing in the wind, and all at once a child stood in his place, smile as sardonic as the devil himself, but pure, pure and bright and reaching out his young hand to her._

_The clock struck, a chime that nearly split her ears._

_As she watched, the little boy slowly lowered his hand, sadness staining his beautiful eyes as he mouthed something to her. Her body was burning…………_

**_Flash_**_._

_……..Burning against the cold windowpane, and there was snow falling outside, and he would be home soon and she was afraid, afraid, don't let her come down, **don'tlethercomedown**-_

_Her hand sank into the windowpane, and the glass splintered and she splintered and she opened her mouth to scream-_

And opened her eyes only to find herself staring at a white-washed ceiling, the covers tangled so tightly around her that they had cut off the circulation in her right arm. Selphie's softly snoring form lay beside her.

She sighed, collapsing back onto the mattress.

_Just a dream._

Quistis sighed, wiping the sweat for her brow as she lay back on the pillow and tried to catch her breath.

It **was** a dream…wasn't it? The voice, the wind…had all seemed so real…Quistis sighed a little at how ridiculous she was being. Save the Queen was coiled up like a sleeping snake on the lap of one of the flowered hotel armchairs across the room, and the earth seemed very calm and stationary, not as it had a moment ago.

She didn't want to think about the dream, and whatever meaning it could possibly hold within those horrid flashes of failures. It was probably all just an aftershock of almost losing Seifer, a reminder of just how many times he had slipped through her fingers.

She was in no hurry to study the implications of **that**, either.

She hurried to the shower before Selphie could wake up and claim it. She had been on enough missions with Selphie to know that the girl was a hot water hog. Her hurry, however, was halted by a wave of dizziness, a spinning in her skull that nearly sent her reeling into the wall. Quickly, she steadied herself, remembering the events of the previous day and the reason for her exhaustion.

Mag-poisoning, which was, in effect, like the build-up of lactic acid that caused soreness in muscles, would maintain the bruises in her arms for weeks and make casting anything slightly painful. Once Dr. Kadowaki saw them, she'd be on inactive mission status for at least a month.

_Shit_.

Sure enough, a glance at each of her wrists revealed a series of streaks that pooled dark purple in her palm, results of the stress to the veins. Absently, she wondered how the rest of the group had fared last night. Hopefully, Brek and Seifer had left one another alone, but she never could count on that with Seifer. Brek, however, seemed to be sufficiently scared shitless of the ex-knight now, and Quistis could hardly blame him. She was wary herself.

Quistis shook her head as she stretched. Whatever had glinted in Seifer's eyes in the truck, it was gone. She recalled a brief image of him the night before, hovering over her, and aside from the fact that he had been removing her boots and tucking her in, for Hyne's sake, he'd seemed relatively normal.

"Normal must be a relative term," she thought to herself.

Brek, however, was a different matter.

Quistis gingerly touched the side of her temple, where Hyperion's handle had given her a good whack. She had always trusted Brek as far as she could throw a Snow Lion, and it seemed now more than ever that she had done so with good reason. Although she held a brief truce with him now, a protocol violation-eye-for-an-eye of sorts, she held up no delusions that it would last. Brek was childish, and years of daddy's money winning battles for him had made his conduct and his confidence worse. She had no idea if, given the opportunity, he would actually have pulled the trigger. She supposed she would never know, now. Brek was many things: a coward, an opportunist, but she had never expected **this** from him.

It was only a matter of time before Brek did something stupid concerning Seifer, or vice versa. Brek's main priority in life was saving face, and Quistis worried at the cost.

She sighed, rubbing at the bruises and trying to clear her thoughts for the moment. Her gloves would hide the marks, but those were the first things Dr. Kadowaki would remove. The doctor knew her too well.

Inactive status wasn't going to help her accumulate enough mission brownie points to stand before the Garden Board any time soon in regards to her instructing license.

"Shit," she muttered, finding some small satisfaction in the curse word.

She stepped into the tiny, flower-infested shower, enjoying the feel of the hot water pounding at her back. She closed her eyes, scrubbing vigorously with the soap and shampoo until she could no longer smell the rank stench of garbage on her skin or in the threads of her hair. She let the hot water pound at the tender spot in her temple, flushing some of the headache away. While standing, she only managed to throw up twice, which she considered a minor victory.

She toweled off, quickly brushing and securing her hair in her usual flip, making sure the ends were combed down smoothly before tossing the brush into her bag. She hated having her hair down- for whatever reason, it had always made her feel vulnerable, open, the way she felt on a battlefield not properly Junctioned. Quistis Trepe was neither open, nor vulnerable, nor anything vaguely resembling susceptible. She was a Class A SeeD, damnit, and she could take care of herself.

She dressed quickly, pulling out a neatly folded pair of military slacks and a white button-down shirt with a pair of long socks and her now rank pair of black military boots, which had long ago lost their shine. The boots felt at least five hundred pounds each to her tired arms- getting them on and zippered was quite a challenge. She ended up with her foot propped up against the sink, trying to interject enough energy into her arms to finish the task.

The door burst open, nearly scaring her into losing her balance on the slippery floor.

"Morning, sunshine!" exclaimed Selphie, ducking under her leg and dropping her duffel bag on the floor with a loud clang. "I'm glad to see you're feeling better!"

"Better….right." she mumbled, scowling at the zipper. Giving up and pulling her pants over her boots, she walked out of the bathroom, shutting the door on a singing Selphie and shrugging into her trench coat. Knowing Xu, she'd want to get moving as soon as humanly possible. Well, perhaps not humanly. Xu wasn't exactly known for compassion in her military procedures, especially those of the morning variety.

She pulled on a pair of leather gloves and stretched each one of the fingers as she headed towards the bed, stifling another yawn.

She freefell back down onto the mattress, arms spread out wide as the springs creaked beneath her. She stretched out sideways on the bed, letting her feet dangle over the side and shutting her eyes once more, waiting for the others to get ready.

No sooner did she close her eyes, Xu's voice interrupted her thoughts. "All right! Get your bags packed and your asses moving. I said **move** it, Selphie."

Quistis cracked open one of her eyes to catch a glimpse of Selphie giving Xu her 'evil eye'. Brek brushed past, pulling on one arm of his coat as he walked and casting a baleful glare in her direction.

"If all of you aren't in the Ragnarok in five minutes, consider yourselves permanent Tromedian residents." Yelled Xu, slamming the door after her. Selphie followed after, muttering about non-morning people. Another slamming door resounded through Quistis' ears, not improving her headache.

Sighing, Quistis moved to shove herself up, only to be staring a single gloved hand thrust in front of her nose. She followed the dark sleeve, coming eye to eye to one impatient-looking Seifer Almasy. His hair was still wet from his shower, the dark blonde strands plastered to his face and making him look like a fairer version of Squall. She doubted he'd appreciate the likeness.

"Well? Do you want to lay there all day?" he scowled.

_Yes please_, she thought, groaning.

She took his hand, wincing as he pulled her up in one easy motion, the pressure on her sore hand less than pleasant.

"What?" he asked quickly at her sharp intake of breath.

"Nothing." She replied, releasing his hand, and straightening up. She looked for her bag, only to find it slung across his shoulder with his own bag, both handles threaded through the fingers of one hand. She watched after him, dumbfounded to say the least.

"Are you coming?"

She blinked. "Yes." She shut the door carefully behind her, afraid the hallucination would break. Seifer being nice? She hadn't been hit that hard, had she?

Seifer turned to regard her, slowing his pace a little. "What's going to happen when we get back?"

She shrugged in response. "They're probably going to call a Tri-Garden conference, and Cid and Xu are going to have to make a statement there."

"Xu said there isn't much **to** state." Replied Seifer.

Surprised, Quistis raised her eyebrows. He and Xu had been discussing the mission without ripping each other to shreds? Stranger things had happened- a current one, in fact, was that he was holding the lobby door for her at the moment.

She looked over at him, only to find him casting a suspicious glare around. She smiled when she figured out the nature of his apprehension.

"Trying to avoid your secret admirer?" she mused.

He grimaced. "I swear, I could hear her scratching at the door last night."

Quistis just chuckled in reply as they rounded the corner only to find Seifer's not-so-secret admirer at the desk, smiling invitingly. Invitingly was perhaps an under-exaggeration. The woman practically had a welcome mat plastered on her lips. "You're leaving already?"

Seifer cast Quistis a look out of the corner of his eye. "What are the chances we'll have to come back here?" he muttered, glaring at Quistis as she gave the receptionist an overly-friendly wave.

She shrugged. "Well, if there's a follow-up investigation, I'd imagine that we'd have to come and tie up loose ends."

"Great." Seifer rolled his eyes and kept walking, ignoring his one-woman fan club (who in all fairness could be counted as two, both in size and enthusiasm). Quistis smiled and followed after him.

The air was brisk, and it woke her a little. She tread quietly behind him, watching the shadows of the leaves shiver in the wind.

"Your shoulder," she spoke up. "How is it?"

He glanced over at her. Ragnarok was in sight- she could see Selphie doing some last-minute engine adjustments, breath cloudy in the air.

He shrugged. "Fucking wonderful. How do you think? _Hyne_."

Quistis rolled her eyes. So much for _pleasant_.

_He was standing at the shore, watching the tide tongue his boots in rhythmic, foamy crests. The sea spit at the rocks lining the shore, each wave spewing a foamy froth onto the jagged gray rocks. He felt warm, solid here- he was a child of the ocean- he returned to it to hear his heartbeat echoed in its own. As a child he had skipped stones across it, once dreaming that he would skip stones clear across its choppy breadth when he was older. Of course- he would be great when he was older. He would be strong and swift and stones would skip a million times across the ocean's choppy arms- all for him._

_He closed his eyes and listened to the airy whisper of the water as it danced with the moon, two lovers swaying in the dead of night to some ethereal music that only the hallowed hear._

_He opened his eyes to stare at the moon, the cold glow warming his skin like memory fuels a psychic fire. His blood curdled in her bitter hymns, the blood in his already injured arm sharpening to an almost painful rhythm. He found himself reaching, arm stretching out in the pale moonlight and feeling a warmth encircle his wrist, soft and fiery and barbed with pain._

_He looked down into the water, and saw the face of a child, face half hidden by a shock of unkempt blonde hair, cheeks stained with blood. It was the skeleton boy, the boy whose shadow chased him around the house in the wavering darkness of his own silhouette. The water flickered, and for a moment, became another boy, a boy with clean hands and a clean crew cut. He shut his eyes tightly, praying that when he opened his eyes, the skeleton boy would be gone._

_Flicker. A wave of light danced across his eyes, clearing as it blinded._

_The same cold green eyes stared up at him from the water's cold surface, smiling at him from the shadows of the past._

**_Don't you see? I've been here all along. I've been waiting._**

_He understood. It was she that had called him back, that day in the tower as she had smiled at him and dangled forever from her fingertips. He saw her lips move beneath the water's shadows, saw once again her pallid face illuminated by the Timber station's glow lights, when she had called him, woken him, held out her hand and promised him the world if only he could take it. But it was not him she wanted. Not the man. She called the skeleton boy..._

**_"Everyone has dreams, you know. Even little boys long dead. What do you dream, my little boy? Who killed you?"_**

_"Who are you?"_

**_"Don't you know? I'm a hurricane. Poor little boy, so hurt, so misused. How can you decide anymore? What's right or wrong?"_**

**_Boy_**_…_

_"Don't call me that."_

**_"What?"_**

_"I'm not a **boy**. Don't call me that. …….I am no one's goddamn boy, and I -- I'm never going to be."_

**_"…….what of the nights, the darkness?. He thinks to overcome -- but first, he must come. If you wish an end to childhood's games, come; and I will show you the heart of the storm. I will teach you, my little one, things that make the belly of the world quake with glory..."_**

_And with that, his struggle was over. The shadowy skeleton within him had heard all it needed to quake his blood and extend his hand. _

_His soul was sold._

_Indeed, the skeleton boy had sold his soul the minute she opened her mouth, just as she had intended. The witch knew that the man that stood before her was tired, weary, the anger that was his fuel quickly draining with each passing day. But the skeleton boy…_

_His anger was eternal. His ambition stretched on forever._

_Seifer opened his eyes._

_The skeleton boy's reflection reached up, and he found his own arm extended down at the water in kind, small, bloody fingers stretched towards the wavering reflection of the moon. The yellow, twisted orb seemed to part in the waves, a whisper escaping the rippling reflection._

**_"Bring me the children."_**

_The wave curdled up suddenly, encircling his wrist with a grip like iron, dragging him down………into the water and the shadows and he couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe and suddenly it was all becoming very calm…….he was like a stone sinking in the water, watching the ripples curdle and fan out into nothing……_

_"Seifer."_

**_"Bring me the children_**_…………" it was a whisper now, one fading away like the bright red spots in his eyes._

_"**Seifer**."_

He opened his eyes again, only to find them staring at a mauve colored headrest.

"We're almost there." Stated Xu, turning back around in her seat.

"Hn." Muttered Seifer, leaning his head against the cool pane of the window and trying to get his bearings on a world without water and shadow children. His arm ached a little, warm soreness pooling in the upper bicep near his shoulder, but the pain quickly ebbed against the cold glass. Hell, the day he had a normal daydream (or any damned dream for that matter) was probably the day he had a fucking heart attack in his sleep. Still, he frowned.

The skeleton boy was not a name he had dared to think of for years, if in fact since his childhood he had ever willingly conjured up the image. Seifer narrowed his eyes as he stared out the window, trying once again to bury the image.

His ears popped as the ship descended, and one glance out the window showed once again the snowy landscape of Trabia, wrapped in sheets of ice and powdery mountain ranges. He saw Brek teeter to his feet, looking exhausted. Apparently the young cadet had gotten less sleep than he had. The young man's dark eyes flitted over at him for a brief moment, taking hold in a pithy exchange of animosity. Quistis stood up, arching her back and letting out a soft yawn as she balled up her fists in the air, popping the kinks out of her spine and her knuckles in a series of cracks that made him wince. Although, not before appreciating the delicate arch her breasts made as her trenchcoat sloped off her shoulders.

Was he checking out Trepe? Yep. Damn.

_You're only human, Almasy_. Quistis Trepe was a beautiful woman. A pain in the ass, but a beautiful woman.

Selphie stretched out her arms and proceeded to blow a pink bubble almost bigger than her head, snapping it just as quickly. "Home sweet home!" she exclaimed, bouncing on the balls of her feet as the hatch slid open to the side.

Seifer yawned, glaring at her from the corner of his hazy vision as she blew another colossal bubble. "Hyne. Do you ever run out of energy?"

Another bubble popped, sucked back into Selphie's energetic mouth. "Nope!"

Xu shouldered her bag, giving Selphie a withering look that would have brought anyone else down a couple of notches. Selphie seemed unphased, and proceeded to blow a bubble even bigger than its predecessor. Xu rolled her eyes and turned to regard the rest of them. "Meeting at thirteenth bell, conference room next to Cid's office. I'll expect all of you there. On **time**, Selphie."

Selphie just smiled sweetly at her lieutenant. "Me? I'm _never_ late!"

"A SeeD **and** a comedian," muttered Xu, pulling up her hood as she descended Ragnarok's steep walkway, braving Trabia's hostile gusts once more.

The group walked in silence through the Quad, hunched against the wind. Seifer looked up at the diamond top of Garden's snow-laden structure, and felt a strange tugging feeling, an almost calming relief that for once over-rode his normal apprehension at seeing his old failing ground. It was a strange, alien comfort, one that unnerved more than it soothed.

"Tch. Home sweet home my ass," he muttered.

The blonde at his side peered at him from the corner of her fur-lined hood. Her eyes looked…cheerless, tired. The way he felt.

Quistis turned to regard him at the doors, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes that the wind was currently toying with. "Seifer. Don't forget. The preliminary SeeD written exam is tomorrow morning. Don't forget to run over those books I gave you- the rest of the information should be familiar." Seifer just shrugged. His problem had never been the written portion of any of the exams, and they both knew it. He wasn't stupid. Just……

"About yesterday-" he began.

"Yes?" she turned, slightly, an unreadable expression in her eyes.

_Thank you,_ he thought to himself, but his mouth wouldn't follow his words.

A pause. "Nothing," he snapped, looking away.

She met his eyes, then quickly looked away. "I see."

He watched her walk away, a mysterious lump wedged in his throat that felt a little like shame.

…

…

…

Cid set the file down, a worried furrow etched in his brows. It had been there since the beginning of the meeting. Squall sat at his side, ignoring the documents in front of him.

Quistis and Selphie gave a small wave to Arya, Zell's girlfriend. The young woman had a side job at Garden taking dictations and military conferences aside from her library position. This side job was in addition to the thirty others she already dabbled in- the girl was everywhere.

Currently, the young woman was typing up the mission summaries and the current commentary from the back of the room. Arya smiled at the girls, and gave a shy little wave in return before resuming her typing. Selphie and Quistis quickly refocused their eyes at the center of the room.

"Let me get this straight. You arrive at seven hundred hours. SeeD team A goes to tower directly, while SeeD team B goes to acquire information and opinions from the residents, resulting in this-" At this, Squall held up Quistis' acquired interview. "One testimony from a Mr.Drefford."

"Correct," replied Quistis, arms folded neatly behind her back. All five of the Tromedian SeeD squad stood in front of Cid's desk, spines pencil straight and faces impassive.

"SeeD team A encountered resistance at the gates of destination. Group reconvened at designated area at-"

"Approximately fourteen hundred hours." Replied Xu.

"Right. Group at this time hijacked a garbage truck, stealing civilian property to acquire credibility and entrance with transportation."

"Correct, sir," replied Xu. Quistis braced herself. Judging from the Commander's tone, this briefing was already off to a bad start.

"Nearly an hour later, said transportation arrives at final destination. Problems arise at entrance, two civilians are decommissioned and destination is invaded."

"Not civilians. What we believe to be participants in the terrorist organization responsible for the tower's collapse." Quistis spoke up.

Squall lifted an eyebrow. "Evidence for your claim?"

Xu glared at Quistis from the corner of her eye in a tone that clearly suggested her absence from the conversation. Quistis ignored her and continued speaking.

"Said persons attempted to detain us initially, then attempted to run us off the road after the tower's destruction. They also maintained a suspicious demeanor in the first questioning."

Squall's expression did not change. "**Physical** evidence for your claim?"

Quistis bit the inside of her cheek. "None at the present, **sir**."

"As I was saying. After the two civilian personnel were incapacitated, group proceeded to the IGCS tower, wherein groups scoured the towers. Conditions?"

"Dark, uninhabited. Print-outs were still sticking out of the feeders, coffee cups were overturned. The place clearly had not been occupied by the original personnel for some time." Said Xu. "I have photographic evidence to back up the abandoned state of the tower."

At least there was some physical evidence to back them up, even if it was minor.

"Noted. Lights were suddenly turned on, group was attacked. Correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many soldiers?"

Xu shifted her feet. "Initially about ten or twenty. But more followed. I'd say their numbers amassed to about fifty persons, sir, in total. Sensbots numbered about twice that many."

"Can you confirm this?" asked Squall, eyes coolly flickering to Quistis.

"I can."

"Me too!" exclaimed Selphie, earning her a hard look from Squall. "The Sensbots were just prototypes, basic ones, not specific to any military establishment from what I could discern in my brief observations, sir." Selphie rocked back on her heels, clearly pleased with her newly acquired military dialect.

Squall nodded. "Building was then evacuated by SeeD team, upon which, its collapse. What was the bomb type used?"

Selphie spoke up. "The bomb type used was a code-based direct activation site, with remote detonation capabilities. The make and model wasn't particularly notable, but the wires, as far as I could tell, ran through the whole building. Whoever set up the bomb had time."

Squall walked out from behind the tables, arms folded behind his back. "Hn." Quistis had to agree with the Commander's pensiveness. Local terrorists weren't known for their long-term planning- theirs was more of a cut and run operative. Whoever designed the attack on the IGCS had time, money, and resources beyond what any small, local group could amass in a month's time.

"All injuries were reported?" Cid looked up from his paperwork, a concerned frown knitting his bushy brows.

Quistis held Brek's glare easily eyes never leaving his as an uneasy gaze was exchanged. _That's right_, thought Quistis. _You pull the rug under my feet, I'll drop the floor from yours._ The young man was thankfully silent. Perhaps self-servingly silent was a better description. Either way worked for the young woman that watched him.

Xu nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Is there anything else you'd like to say on the matter of this mission, Lieutenant?"

Xu folded her arms behind her back, expression never wavering. "I followed SeeD protocol and took all necessary freedoms in accomplishing my mission objectives. Iron Fist was authorized, and it was used only as a last resort. No change in protocol could have averted this disaster, and I would make no changes."

_Poor Xu_, thought Quistis. Her friend had been looking forward to a promotion for some time, eyeing up the position of second-in-command. Now, thanks to this mission, that promotion looked to be postponed- indefinitely.

Then again, her own Instructor's license wasn't looking any closer.

Squall gave Xu a curt nod before turning to regard them all. "You all understand that this does not bode well for Balamb Garden. With almost no physical evidence, basically, the terrorist allegations are going to fall on us, especially from Galbadia. An investigation team is currently being sent to clear the rubble, re-interview your **one** witness, and collect any physical evidence, which from your stories I frankly doubt exists."

"It isn't that we don't believe you. Don't doubt our policy to stand by our cadets." Added Cid. "However, thus far all we have is purely anecdotal evidence, evidence that won't bode well at the board review."

"Basically, all we have is a violation of notice on the IGCS contract, one that hardly merits the charges of espionage we'll have on our hands." Squall's eyes flickered to Seifer. "This mission…or whatever the five of you want to call it, is going to become a political snarl that's going to take years to unravel."

Physical evidence. The bullet.

Quistis reached into the pocket of her SeeD jacket, procuring a small plastic bag in which a medium-sized pellet dangled. Squinting, Seifer concluded that it was the shell she'd torn from his arm earlier. The thought caused an uneasy prickle in his shoulder.

"I would like to submit this as evidence," she said coolly, tossing the bag onto the table in front of Squall and Cid. "I removed this from cadet Almasy's arm. I want it sent for analysis at the Deep Sea Research Center."

Cid looked up. "The rest of you are excused." He said to the rest, who filed out quickly. Arya, Cid, and Squall remained, Arya drumming her fingers on the tops of the keys with a kind of nervous apprehension.

The door clicked quietly shut behind them. Quistis cleared her throat.

"Why there?" asked Cid, curiously squinting at the small bag, to which bloody shreds were still attached.

"It's the only place that does biotic samplings and can run effective bio-weapon analysis." From the back, Arya, clearly unsure if she was supposed to continue typing, hesitantly plucked a few keys.

Squall also examined the slug, then set it down. "It's an AX-318 standard ammo slug. You want a test run on it why?"

Quistis met her Commander's eyes coolly. "It has one of the fastest poison mechanisms I've ever come across in all my field experience, not to mention the fact that it nearly killed a grown man in a matter of minutes, not to mention tore through a standard SeeD shield in one try." She wasn't about to mention the 'beating bullet' experience, but hopefully her other evidence would lend her enough credibility to run the tests.

The tapping from the dictation machine in the back was distracting.

Squall shrugged indifferently. "This isn't helpful to us. We can't acknowledge Almasy's presence at the scene without further compounding our problems with the board. With his record, they'll jump to faster and worse conclusions than they would otherwise." 

"Anyway," continued Leonhart, "It could've been mag-coupled." Mag-coupling referred to a joint attack that paired a physical implement with a magical one. It was not unheard of in military procedure, but it was not particularly common, either.

Quistis shrugged. "Doubtful. The soldier's attacks were mechanical, mainly physical. This bullet could prove that a larger organization is at work here. No local terrorist group has the funding for anti-mag generators and bio-toxins, and you know it."

"The bio-testing isn't cheap, Quistis. It isn't for _theories_."

"I realize that, _Commander_. Nonetheless, I want a full cocktail of bio-tests and theoretical ballistics relative to standardized SeeD shields run on it."

"Like I _said_-" snapped Squall, indifferent expression upgrading to annoyed.

"Then _bill_ _me_." Retorted Quistis.

Cid's eyes wavered to and from two of his most talented soldiers, unease heavy in his fatherly gaze. "I'm going to make the necessary phone calls. Quistis, you have clearance to submit your request to the lab." His eyes flickered between them. "Settle this, you two, whatever it is." He shut the door behind him.

Squall turned back to Quistis, glaring. "You know, your insistence in dragging Almasy with you is only going to make things worse for this case, Quistis. Why did you insist on taking him along?"

Quistis lost her formal stance the instant Cid left the room, crossing her arms. "You have to ask? You were the ones that insisted that I watch after him like a child. I'm just following **your** orders, _Commander_."

"It doesn't look good, Quistis, to have an ex-revolutionary on our squad involved in an IGCS dispute, and you know it."

"You think they're going to implicate him in the tower collapse?" scoffed Quistis, unable to keep the cynicism out of her voice. "How? Do you think he shot himself?"

Squall's eyes narrowed. "Your bull-headedness is going to land the Garden on probation. In case you haven't noticed, Galbadia has a personal vendetta against your current star pupil. Would you like to make a comment on that, on the record? Just in case, I don't know, your license certification comes up for review?"

Quistis's eyes narrowed, anger flushing her cheeks and heating her eyes to an almost predatory gleam. She had never been this angry at Squall, not in all the years he had ignored her, stepped on her feelings, and generally treated her beneath dirt. Her instructor's license was the last proverbial straw.

"**On** the record, I'd like to state that I am just following the orders given to me by my knowledgeable, omnipotent, son-of-a-**bitch** Commander, and that perhaps if he doesn't like my methods, he can do his own damned dirty work."

She turned, pausing at the door, eyes spitting daggers. "Off the record, _Squall_, go talk to a wall." The door slammed behind her, rattling the plaques on the wall.

Arya looked up, the script coil tangled in her fingers as she brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Um, Commander, would you like that stricken from the record?"

A second slammed door was her only response.

Because of its somewhat unorthodox ending, the IGCS incident would go down in history as the second most-read mission brief in the history of Balamb Garden.

…

…

A shower and a change of clothes did little to quell Quistis' anger. In fact, the hot water only seemed to fire her blood further. Aside from her trip to Timber, chasing after a renegade Seifer, the Tromedian incident was by far the worst mission she had ever been on, and 'Commander Squall' had been a less than pleasant finish to an even more unpleasant day.

She still had a pounding headache from where the butt of Hyperion had connected with her skull, via Brek, and a discolored bruise from the blow spattered her temple. Brek Garek was a smoking gun, and she knew she couldn't keep his mouth shut forever. Although both he and Seifer had exchanged 'grievances' about equally, a board was ten times more likely to listen to the monetarily affiliated Garek than the less than credible Almasy, even with Quistis backing him.

SeeD was supposed to operate like a well-oiled machine, each part working in perfect sync with the others. Brek Garek's presence had been nothing but a wrench in the gears from the very beginning. The whole thing was made worse by the fact that Quistis had violated several protocols, mainly ignoring the desertion of a fallen member in the interest of the group employed. Although the SeeD's hijacking of a garbage truck would remain confidential, if it leaked, the SeeDs would have worse trouble on their hands. And, however angry with Squall she was, she could admit that Seifer's presence didn't exactly add to the credibility of their statements.

There were too many coincidences. The bomb, the extra personnel, the Sensbots, the strange ammo…all of it had been waiting for them. Their presence had been not only expected, but _prepared_ for.

Quistis adjusted her SeeD uniform and glanced in the mirror, her own angry gaze reflected at her.

They'd been set up.

…

…

…

Seifer stared at the wall, barely flinching as Dr. Kadowaki inserted another shot of the drug cocktail she'd been feeding him for the last few hours. In conjunction with the blood samples taken, Seifer was beginning to feel like a pin cushion.

"It's been awhile, Seifer," said the plump little woman pleasantly, pressing the tab on yet another syringe. "Though I must admit, I didn't think I'd be seeing you again so soon."

"That makes two of us, doctor." Seifer also kept his eyes trained warily on the vial as well. He hated **one** shot. Fourteen was pushing the limit.

She held up his wrist for a brief moment, frowning as she studied the swollen lump of shattered veins. "Stalled a Thunder spell, did you?"

"Thundaga." He muttered.

The doctor tapped at his wrist, circling her hand around it. "No casting for a week, Almasy," she said briskly, turning back to her cart of horrors and selecting another needle.

He flinched as another needle broke through his skin once more, the skin of his shoulder prickling with the cold of the liquid and the thin, annoying pain of the ten gauge needle. "How many more of these am I gonna have to take?"

The doctor flicked her gloved finger against yet another vial. "Seven more." At the young man's scowl, she raised an eyebrow. "You'd have considerably less if you hadn't avoided the standard immunizations shots when you came back here, Seifer. Better a sore arm than a lost arm, ne?"

"Ask me later," muttered the ex-knight sourly, rolling the swollen muscle.

The older woman chuckled. "Still not over your dislike for shots? You and Quistis are very alike in that phobia, I'm afraid."

Quistis? Afraid of shots? Interesting. Yet another chink in the armor of the impenetrable Quistis Trepe.

"I'm disappointed, doctor. Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?" Seifer's ears pricked at the familiar voice. Trepe stood in the doorway, freshly showered and suited up in typical SeeD attire.

The doctor smiled, never looking up from her table of syringes as she stuck Seifer yet again. "I would say I would have violated it, if your fear of shots was not already so well-known, my dear."

She turned her back to Seifer to address the young woman in front of her. "Have a seat, Quistis. I'll be with you in just a minute."

"That's really not necessary, doctor. I really have no-"

"In a minute, Ms. Trepe." Said Dr. Kadowaki firmly.

The young woman rolled her eyes, hopping up onto the table with a huff. Seifer tried to scoot noiselessly across the table, preparing to slip out with the new distraction. The crinkle of the crepe-like table paper made him wince.

"Oh no, Mr. Almasy. You stay right where you are."

"Shit," muttered Seifer.

Quistis gave Seifer a decent glare from her position on the opposite table. She watched as Dr. Kadowaki affixed a rubber tourniquet to his arm, tapping at the rope of veins on the inside of his elbow. The arm muscle flexed automatically, giving Quistis a decent view of the ex-knight's physical prowess since his re-admittance. His shirt and vest lay next to him in a pile on the table, revealing broad, tanned shoulders and a flat stomach that sloped in subtle knots to his belt buckle. He was not at his former physical peak; however, he was leaps and bounds away from the skeleton that had walked in nearly two months ago. Quistis unconsciously fanned herself with an outdated issue of Weapons Monthly, wishing that the air conditioning was in better working order.

Kadowaki quickly released the tourniquet as she filled and capped three small vials of Seifer's blood, setting them in a tray and quickly affixing a piece of gauze to the young man's arm. "Fold your arm and keep it elevated until I say otherwise. I have to take the blood now before the next set of injections clouds the readings," she said briskly, snapping off her gloves into the small trashcan and pulling on a fresh pair before turning to the young woman behind her. "

"Quistis, my dear. Xu says you encountered a nasty bout of mag-poisoning."

Xu, that bloody tattletale.

Quistis broke her gaze with Seifer, studying the poster on the wall about Chocobo nutrition. "Xu has a nasty habit of over exaggerating, doctor."

The doctor would not be swayed. "I'll decide that for myself, Quistis. Sit."

 "Hold out your wrists."

"I'd rather not-"

"Now." Insisted the doctor.

The young woman reluctantly released her wrists into the doctor's waiting hands, studying the ceiling as the doctor clucked at what she saw there. "Quistis Trepe, this is one of the worst cases of Mag poisoning that I've seen. What exactly did you cast?"

Quistis suddenly wished very much that Seifer was not in the room. "Curaga and Esuna." She muttered quietly.

_And Thundaga, and Esuna, and Curaga, and Curaga…..and Esuna… _she added silently.

"How many times?"

"I…….don't know." She replied honestly. The doctor attempted to roll up her sleeves, but was stopped by the thickness of the material holding tightly against her skin. "Take off the blouse, Quistis."

"But-"

Dr. Kadowki just shook her head. "I have only one examining room, Quistis. The rest are full from a very unlucky rookie mission that involved a Wendigo and a Marlboro and not nearly enough support magic. Besides, I'm sure a tank top is nothing that Mr. Almasy hasn't seen before."

Quistis sighed. It wasn't exactly her bare shoulders that she didn't want Seifer to see, but arguing with the doctor was futile.

She removed the jacket and removed the tie around her neck, setting both on the table beside her. She wore a plain white bra underneath and a thin standard-issued white tank top, but she felt strangely……exposed, holding out her injured wrists for all to see. She felt Seifer's eyes on her and willed him to suffer a momentary seizure.

More clucking from the doctor. Quistis was sure that Kadowaki had been a very maternal Chocobo in a past life. The doctor followed the bruises up with gentle fingers, stopping at Quistis' barely squelched outcry at the pain the simple touch elicited.

"That's it, Ms. Trepe. No casting for a month."

"But-"

"But nothing. I'm placing you on inactive duty during that time. Not a Cura, not even a Float. Do you understand?"

Quistis sighed. "Yes, Doctor." She muttered sullenly.

Dr. Kadowaki sighed, shaking her head as if she were dealing with children. "I'm going to run a cure diffusion through those veins of yours. Shouldn't take more than twenty minutes."

"But-"

"No buts!" insisted the doctor. "What are you chuckling at, Mr. Almasy? You've still got seven shots left!"

…

…

…

Quistis and Seifer emerged from the Med bay at around the same time, both sporting sore appendages and flesh-colored bandages. She'd given the two suckers as well, as a joke. Seifer had chewed his to pieces within the first minute, but Quistis was still nursing hers.

"Why'd you do it?" asked Seifer abruptly.

"Do what?" asked Quistis, bending her arm at the elbow and looking over at him.

"You know what." He said dully, voice carrying a tinge of anger in it.

She swore, Seifer Almasy had more unpredictable mood swings than a pregnant Wendigo.

"I had no choice. You would have died." She shrugged. She knew it would come to this- it was what she had wanted to avoid. He'd see the scars and inevitably start rattling off about his ability to protect himself in his own chauvinistic idiom-

He grabbed her arm, turning her and ignoring the flash of pain in her eyes. "Well, it was a damned stupid thing to do."

Her eyes narrowed. "Is that your way of saying _thank you_? Forgive me if I say you sound a little ungrateful."

"Grateful about what? You granting me my shitty life back?" he sneered. "Well, Hyne, forgive me if there isn't much to be grateful _about_."

She glared at him, still holding her other arm up to prevent the blood flow from reopening. "Would it kill you to be positive for a change?"

"Didn't you already ask me that once before?" he returned, raising an eyebrow.

"No, as I recall I asked you if it would kill you to be _pleasant_ for five minutes."

"Same difference." He snapped.

"Well, would it?" she exclaimed, throwing out her arms and wincing at the spasm of pain that accompanied it.

He didn't answer, but sourly and silently stalked ahead of her.

"Augh! I can see it now, etched on your bloody tombstone!" she shouted after him. "Seifer Almasy-Killed by kindness!"

…

…

…

"Hey Quisty- over here!" Quistis followed the voice across the cafeteria to where Zell was waving enthusiastically. A circular table seated Irvine, a very tired-looking Selphie, Zell, a still-razzled-looking Arya, and one worried-looking Rinoa. Quistis waved back at Zell to show she'd seen him, then proceeded to the line, making a face at the tuna-fish casserole and turning up her nose at the lasagna in favor of a simple salad and some bread. Her stomach was still burning from her encounter with Seifer. The man was incorrigible, and that was by generous estimation. One minute he was tucking her in and the next he was yelling at her for saving his life. He and Squall certainly had more in common than their scars. They were both impossible.

She set the tray down harder than she meant to, making the entire table rattle.

"Is something wrong, Quistis?" asked Rinoa concernedly. Quistis wanted to rattle her for being so considerate.

"No." she lied, taking her seat between Zell and Irvine. Arya smiled at her, tucking a strand of short brown hair behind her ear as she gave Quistis a little wave. The girl was pretty in a mousy way, brown eyes hidden behind a set of delicately rimmed glasses and her shy smile an appropriate prelude to her calm and gentle demeanor. She was a bit quieter than the rest of the group, but Quistis had always liked her. She kept Zell grounded, which someone as enigmatic as Zell desperately needed. The group often referred to her as 'Zell's Lightening Rod', a label that just made the young woman laugh.

"Karma." Said Selphie, pointing a custard-filled spoon at Quistis.

"What?" asked the young woman, looking up from her salad.

"Karma," said Selphie, simply. "If you're worried about Brek, don't be. Karma will get him."

"You mean like Karma Sutra?" asked Irvine, perking up.

"_No_, Irvine," replied Rinoa, putting her hand over her face.

"What the hell's Karma Sutra?" asked Zell, earning him a few strange looks, one of them from Arya.

"_Karma_," began Selphie, setting down her spoon. "Is a force of energy the cycles back and forth between people. Since it cycles, patterns of behavior inevitably repeat themselves. If you exude bad karma, it will wind up coming back to you. It's like a big energy boomerang!"

"So, if you're a big meanie, a bunch of bad stuff will happen to you." Chimed in Rinoa, gesturing expressively with her salad fork. "Along those lines."

Irvine raised an eyebrow. "I dunno, Selph. Sounds an awful lot like one of those stories that you used to make up as kids."

"Stories?" exclaimed the sprightly young woman with no small measure of indignance. "I never told stories!"

"Yes you did!" chuckled the cowboy. "You used to tell stories about the boogey man, and the candy cane princess, and the underwear-stealin' guardian force-"

"Hey!" exclaimed Zell, setting down his sandwich. "If that GF's made up, where the hell has my underwear been going all these years?"

"Hey, look, Zell! I think they just put out more hotdogs!" exclaimed Selphie, gesturing excitedly.

"Are you serious?!" yelled Zell, making a beeline for the counter.

The group watched him go, nearly toppling an entire line of cadets in the process.

"Well-you-just-remember-what-I-said-about-Karma-Quistis-Irvy-I'll-see-you-later-say-hi-to-Squall-Rinoa-bye-Arya!" Exclaimed Selphie quickly gathering up her tray and making her escape before Zell returned and realized that not only were there no more hotdogs, but that Selphie had been pilfering his underwear for various uses for years. It was a well-known fact among the old orphanage gang, and the tradition had simply renewed itself as Selphie recollected fond memories of panty-theft. Zell remained cutely clueless, as the martial artsman was apt to do, constantly complaining about his lack of underwear. Arya seemed to find it amusing that her boyfriend still had suspicions of a Guardian Force designed especially for underwear pilfering.

Irvine tipped his hat at his retreating girlfriend, and Quistis marveled at his calm in the face of Selphie's insanity. She supposed one got used to it after awhile.

She was starting to get used to Seifer, after all.

"Hey, there's Squall, over there." Remarked Irvine. Still, if Squall was coming, then she was going. She had no intention of sticking around and enduring another argument about……whatever.

"My cue to leave," muttered Quistis, gathering her tray and stuffing her leftover bread into her salad.

"Why are you leaving so early, Quistis?" asked Rinoa, frowning.

The blonde instructor gave her friend a shrug. "Just tired, Rinoa. Oh, and Arya, sorry you had to witness that today."

The girl nodded, and Quistis proceeded to walk away after saying a quick goodbye to the rest of the group.

"Witness what? Is it just me, or has Quistis been acting strangely lately?" asked Rinoa, frowning. Irvine shrugged, and Arya pretended to study something on her fork. All three looked up at the shout that subsequently echoed throughout the cafeteria.

_"What do you mean, you're out of hotdogs?!"_

…

…

…

_When dealing in matters of dinner diplomacy, it is always important to remember one's bearing and appropriate level of conversation. Posture should always be straight and sure- a slouch lends uncertainty to one's character as well as one's physical demeanor. Remember, you are a representative of your institution. One should take care not to say too much, but neither should one say to little- in either case one risks offending. A friendly but closed deportment is preferable when coupled by an attentive ear- pay most attention to what the person is _**not**_ saying, for it is very often what they mean. _

_The forks are also an essential portion of decent eatery. The salad fork, located-_

Disgusted and bored beyond measure, Seifer tossed the book behind him and re-crossed his legs on the desk. He was never going to get any studying done this way. The words just swam directly through his skull, never pausing in their swift journey from ear to ear. How interested was one supposed to get in forks, anyway? A bi-lateral treaty negotiation and one was supposed to be worrying about the difference between a fucking soup spoon and a coffee spoon? More than ever, Seifer hated politics.

He could admit, half-heartedly, that half of his distraction originated from one very annoyed blonde woman not far down the hall. He really had no idea why he'd snapped at her- most likely it was a mixture of annoyance at the needle cocktail injected about fifty times in the same fucking shoulder, the fact that she was half-naked on a cot in a cold room, (and he'd noticed), or the fact that she had nearly black bruises running up her arms, because of him-

Did he _care_ about Quistis Trepe?

There in the room, as she'd reluctantly bared her bruises to the persistent (and sadistic) mother hen Kadowaki, he'd felt a potpourri of emotion- guilt, anger, regret- but mostly guilt, and the emotion was as unfamiliar to him as having a conscience. But there it was. Guilt….regret…all for her. She sacrificed herself too much for others, spread herself too thin to please everyone…he had never wanted that courtesy extended to him. He found himself appreciating it, hell, _returning_ it-

And why? He hated the woman.

He hated the way she tried to take care of everybody. He hated her patience and he hated the way her eyes sparked when she lost her temper. He hated that she kept him on his toes in an argument- he hated it that he never seemed to win with her. He hated that she never remembered to watch her own ass and he hated the way she walked like a Queen and thought like a pauper.

She'd saved his life and he'd jumped down her throat.

Fuck, he'd hurt her feelings and he felt bad. Three years ago he wouldn't have blinked, and now guilt was burning a hole in his fucking stomach.

It was official. He _did_ care about Quistis Trepe. He'd become a damned pansy.

Especially, he mused, he hated the way he was now walking to her room, dog-eared books in hand at way past curfew. He knew she wouldn't refuse him- the teacher in her would be appeased even if the woman in her wanted to throttle him for being an ungrateful asshole. That was, if she was up.

If she was sleeping, she might kill him.

He knocked loudly, hoping that Quistis was a night owl. If not, he could most likely expect a Save-the-Queen-enema.

Just as he was preparing to turn around, feeling like a moron, the door whirred open behind him. "Seifer?" a soft, whispered voice echoed through the hallway and he stopped, turning around almost reluctantly.

She was dressed in a white tank top and a pair of faded gray sweatpants that almost covered her toes in a grey cotton puddle beneath her. The words SeeD were stretched across her bosom, lending the notion that it was a very old tank top, given to her at her early admission before she'd sprouted breasts. Her hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, glasses slung on a colorful cord around her neck. She wore no make-up, never had, as far as he could tell, but a trace of lip gloss shone on her lips with the lamplight backdrop. She looked surprised to see him.

He almost swallowed. He was certainly surprised to see her. Who the hell was she and what had she done with tight-assed Trepe? This girl looked almost….relaxed.

He was currently anything but.

"Yes?" she asked, after a brief silence, resting her book on her hip. Her free hand reached up to tuck an errant gold lock behind her ear as she glared up at him. Her annoyance at him from earlier had still not completely faded, it seemed, although it didn't look as if she was considering beaning him with the paperback that she had pressed against her hip.

Annoyingly, he felt himself relaxing, a kind of distant peace over-taking him in her presence. In the brief time he'd spent with her, the world seemed to have turned upside down, grown a second moon, and he was sure that somewhere, the island closest to heaven was freezing over.

"I was wondering if we could go through the stuff for the written exam." he quickly added, running his fingers through his hair. "And-"

_Speak, Almasy. You remember how, don't you, you fucking idiot? _

"I don't remember any of this shit," he admitted. That was the truth, at least.

"Of course. Come in," she said after a moment's hesitation, moving aside to let him past.

She still had her Instructor's room he noted, a spacious area that could fit three SeeD dormitories (which were also large in comparison to cadet rooms). All the doors looked the same from the outside, and admittedly, he had never been in her room before.

A small white carpet square sat in front of a little white couch with a red rayon throw. Her bed was in the corner, nailed to the wall like all other beds, but larger; a twin with a plain blue spread. A small coffee table sat in front of a couch, upon which was a wooden bowl filled with peaches and a few uncapped highlighters. She must have ordered the peaches to be shipped in.

Two pictures sat on her desk, one a black and white photo of Selphie, Irvine, Squall, Rinoa, Zell and herself, standing on a starlit balcony, all smiling and waving. Quistis' smile, however, seemed forced; a tight-lipped grin painted on to counterfeit those around her.

The other picture was also black and white, taken of seven children by the ocean all with pants or skirts rolled up to play in the surf. A beautiful woman with dark hair and a plain housedress stood with them, skirt pulled up and a gentle smile on her face. He looked closer. A pretty blonde-haired girl had built a magnificent sand castle on the shore, complete with a twig-drawbridge and clamshell windows. Errant strands of her loose braid had come to frame her pretty face, eyes sparkling in the sunlight as her lips curved back in an open, pretty smile, haughty with child-like fearlessness. What the hell happened to the child, that the woman smiled so coldly?

"Seifer?" He turned away.

Quistis' room was neat and painfully orderly, just as he'd always pictured it. Plain and simple. He wasn't surprised.

She motioned for him to take a seat, and flopped down on the other side, closing her book and turning to him expectantly.

"What?" he asked after awhile, irritated.

She smiled, learning forward a little. He tried not to stare at the low neckline of the tank top, and failed.

"What would you like to go over, Seifer?" she asked.

_Your ass mostly, the curve of your neck….Shit, Almasy! It's Trepe! _The combination of young hormones and the fact that he hadn't gotten laid for months weighted heavily on a place far south of his normally coherent brain. That was it. Fucking testosterone.

He cleared his throat. "Everything, I guess."

"All right." She replied, taking the book from him and slipping her glasses onto her nose. "What was the first Garden built, and under what principals was it begun?"

An hour and a half later, he was still there. She asked him question after question, and if he got the answer wrong, she would patiently explain the right one and ask him to explain it back. She really **was** a good teacher, he thought. It was a shame that she wasn't an Instructor anymore. Absently, he had to wonder how much he had to do with that.

More guilt. Shit, how much guilt could one person live with, anyway?

Leaning down, she snatched a peach from her bowl. "Would you like one?"

He shook his head, still looking up an answer on entry procedure in the handbook.

She leaned back, squinting as she checked the peach for rotten patches. Her bare feet were curled up on the cushion next to his feet. For some crazy reason, he kept thinking about touching them.

"Enter two at a time, leading angle opposite door angle," he read, looking up.

"Very good." She nodded, smiling, taking a bite out the fruit and cupping her hand beneath her jaw as the juice dribbled down her chin, splattering against the crease of cleavage that the white tank top procured.

He was quickly losing interesting in studying in favor of following the trail of juice.

He cleared his throat. _Damnit__, Almasy, think of something else….._

_Xu's__ tits on a cold day…..Xu's tits on a cold day…… _

"Hmmm……….another question." She squinted, pondering, while simultaneously he pondered the shine of juice that clung so appealingly to her lip.

_Fuck_.

"What is the most important thing to remember in an assassination attempt?" she asked, taking another bite of the peach. She held it up- the warm, sun kissed sphere still dripping with juice. "Are you sure you don't want one?"

He shook his head. He didn't want the peach, anyway.

_Maybe the juice…._

He quickly dismissed an enticing image that involved peace juice and freshly bared skin. He narrowed his eyes.

_Concentrate, concentrate.__ Don't look at her._

"Block all exits." He managed to spit out. Shit, whoever said that there was only enough blood in a man's body to power one brain was right fucking _on_.

…

…

…

Half an hour later, Quistis set the peach down, licking at her lips. "Right." She set the peach down on the table. "It seems you remember all the vital points, Seifer. I'm sure you'll do fine on the written portion tomorrow." She had been surprised at Seifer's appearance at her door, but not unpleasantly so. She had been suffering another bout of her relatively common insomnia when Seifer's knock had interrupted her reading. She probably should thank him from saving her from Selphie's recommended reading, 'Love with a Trabian Spy.'

She shifted her weight on the couch, all too aware of Seifer's presence on the other end of it. Whatever her feelings for Seifer, his was a presence that couldn't be ignored. As a child, he'd used annoyance tactics to gain her attention, but now……he hardly needed them.

Granted, he still _used_ them….

"Just another fucking hoop," he replied, closing the book and turning slightly on the couch to face her. Silence followed. "So, this is the Trepie shrine." He mused, gesturing at the room at large.

Her eyes narrowed a fraction at the mention of the Trepies. Although having calmed down somewhat since the Sorceress War, the Trepies still existed, and Quistis had never been exactly comfortable with her following. "I never asked for the attention."

"Nobody asks for enemies, either." He replied, narrowing his eyes at the ceiling. "But you attract them."

"I disagree. I think in your case, you'd rather have enemies than friends." She said, voice cool and impassive, regarding him from the opposite end of the couch.

"I didn't know you were offering." He sneered.

She raised her head a fraction, gaze equally challenging. "I didn't know you were accepting." She snapped.

He chuckled bitterly. "Well, I don't know. Which are you offering?" he asked, disconcertingly near. Somehow, the couch's small distance had narrowed, and he was suddenly very close, breath against her skin, his own skin too close for her to think. His eyes, jade pools, bore into hers. His arm brushed against hers, flesh hot and burning against hers. She held her breath.

What was the right answer? _Was_ there one? What exactly did he want from her, anyway?

What exactly did she want from him?

"You know that, Seifer." Her own voice, breathless and distant, one that sounded only vaguely like her own.

But _did_ he know?

Did _she_?

He pulled back, eyes flickering as he searched hers…for what? Acceptance? Fear? Anger? She wasn't sure what he sought after, and was even more unsure of what he found. He sat back, fairly recoiling from her and leaning against the couch. "This was a mistake," he muttered, shutting his eyes.

What was a mistake? Him? Her? _Everything_?

She sat up. "Do you remember your childhood, Seifer?"

A million years from now, she was fairly certain she would never be able to explain why she asked the question. It was out of the blue, a question she had often aimed at herself with little results. At that moment, his defenses were down, lowered, incomplete, and she took a stab at the man they laid bare. Of all the questions to ask, she asked that one. Of all her ponderings about the enigmatic creature before her, she'd wondered if a mother or a father had ever loved him, had ever held him in the embrace of an emotion that was neither selfish nor consuming.

He looked over at her, eyes wary.

"I mean, your childhood before we went to Matron." She explained, hugging her knees to her chest. "Do you remember it?"

The ex-knight shrugged, eyes focused on a distant object across the room. "No." he muttered bluntly, pushing himself up from the cushions. He walked slowly to the door, and Quistis found herself searching for something, anything, that would call him back. She could find nothing.

"Quistis?" he hesitated in the doorway, hall light spilling across his form and lighting his hair like a halo, illuminating his eyes with a distant, hazy regret that she couldn't place.

"What, Seifer?"

"I'm sorry." He spat out, the curt words filling and confusing her ears. For a minute she thought she'd heard wrong.

Seifer Almasy wasn't sorry about anything….was he?

Sorry for _what_?

Before she could answer, the doors slid shut behind him, leaving the young woman to grasp at nuance of meaning in the shadows-gradations and tones of emotion that hung somewhere above her head, lurking in the darkness like murky stars in the night. Invisible, but poignantly present, each sentiment was a dagger in the dark.

…

…

…

A few doors down, Seifer was similarly stirred by his own dark demons, his legs dangling off of the bed as he bowed his head in quiet contemplation. A thousand images poured through his mind- skeleton boys and witches long past…a quiet little girl and an even quieter woman whose eyes chilled him like the snow but whose skin and whose gaze fairly set his blood on fire….

He hadn't been completely honest with Quistis. Not that he had ever been completely honest with anyone- he'd spent a large portion of his life lying to _himself_, after all. The distinction between truth and myth grew more difficult to distinguish, until light and shadow were much the same…until he was always in the dark.

He remembered his childhood, no matter how hard he tried to forget.

He did remember, vaguely, the ghost of his mother- a few abstract memories of a rocking chair and grilled cheese sandwiches. It returned to him in surges, now and again, poignant flashes that always left a bitter aftertaste in his brain. Faintly, faintly he could recall nameless nights of fairy tales spoken gently in his ears as he lay awake, studying the patterns of shadow on the ceiling as her voice wove them into princes and chariots. The graceful curve of her neck smelled heavily of jasmine, and her voice was like dinner music, soft and sweet, but those memories were faint abstractions that were perhaps not true at all, perhaps memories he had made up in the dark to make the night seem less cold…to make his own place in the world seem more legitimate.

His memories of his mother were contraband, daily stricken from his mind by a widower that could no longer bear sight or sound of his dead wife. After she died, his father had banished his mother's memory from the house, swept her as best he could beneath the rugs and hid her in the dark closets that the small, dank space provided. The house, with its peeling white paint and cracked shutters, was always cold and dark and full of creaks, located on a barren gravel road at the edge of a distant crop field. Seifer was never sure exactly whom the field belonged to- he was only certain of its sanctity from his father and the fact that it went to shit a little more every year, just like the garden.

The garden that Seifer would indistinctly recall as perfumed and vibrant with colors now lay grey and crumbled was a sea of vines that slowly made its way up the house sides, sucking off the paint like quiet vampires. The crumbled skeletons of tulips and the sickly, brown skulls of the roses drooped from the bushes, dusting the dirt in a bed of bereavement.

When his mother had died, his father seemed to decree that everything else should die with it. Including her name. Including her soon.

His mother was not spoken of by his father, nor was she ever mentioned by Seifer after a brief period. His initial inquiries as to her presence were met by smacks to the back of the head and cursing that burned his ears. He soon learned to answer his own questions…with answers he liked.

Her ghost, however, unseen by Seifer, seemed to violate his father's restrictions of her memory ban, haunting his father between sips of bourbon and only increasing the man's hateful wrath. There were days when he didn't think that the small flat could contain his father's rage- that perhaps the sidings would split apart and his father's anger would rise up into the air, defiling the sky itself with hate. Sometimes Seifer wondered if maybe his father's anger would fill up the entire world the same way it filled up his.

He remembered his _father_. That was for damned sure.

Seifer spent most days out in the field, bundled up in a small blue zippered coat that was entirely too small for his growing form and a pair of large pink mittens he was fairly sure his mother would not miss, her being dead. He would sit in the middle of the old corn rows, watching the crows fly up into the sky like pepper seeds blown into the wind, listening to the thin, brittle whisper of the browning stalks. The old man did not come looking for him there, and Seifer never wished to be found.

Eating was an informal affair, to say the least. Night and days were spent eating dinners still frozen in the two by four pantry that housed more rats than food. The ice-covered potatoes tasted like chalk and the breaded meat tasted like liquid salt on a stick. Seifer's father rarely strayed from his diet of half-frozen chicken and cheap beer, and so Seifer's only competition for food was usually the rats, who watched him with thirsty eyes from the pantry shelves, whiskers twitching with interest.

Sometimes he would stare at the sky and wish to be a crow.

Even the ugliest birds could fly away.

And that was when the voice whispered in his ears, soft and gentle like a shiver down his spine. Like a shadow that wavered in the corn, a skeleton of shade and murmurs that warmed his ears, emboldened his tiny form.

_The skeleton boy._

The skeleton boy was never worried about his father, or his dead mother, or the broken down flat, or the pantry or the rats. Those things were only temporary (or as much of a notion of temporary that a five year old mind could cook up.) The things around him….they didn't matter.

_Especially not his father_.

The skeleton boy scared and captivated Seifer all at once. He was the whisper of his dead mother on his ears, a low and frightening melody that never left his terrified brain. It soothed him into oblivion some nights, calmed him into the dark, soothing shadows where the skeleton boy lurked. The skeleton boy wasn't afraid of anything…not like Seifer Almasy.

Seifer Almasy was a coward, just like his father.

The skeleton boy hated Jacon Almasy, hated the waste of space in the chair that was nothing but a tangle of cussing and beer. He had once been a worker at a Galbadia manufacturing plant, a job he had lost when his hangover cost him an arm in a pressing machine. Unemployed and living off of welfare checks that bought nothing but TV dinners and beer (more beer than TV dinners, coincidentally), his father made a very poor widower and an even worse father. Jacon Almasy had once spent a happy afternoon ripping pictures of his wife off the wall with one arm, cursing her as weak and stupid and selfish between expletives. Jacon Almasy hated women when he was drunk- and he hated his wife most of all.

Thankfully, he didn't know about his son's collection of photos beneath the folds of his cot- pictures salvaged from the garbage and from the curious eyes of the rats that waited along the aluminum barrels for bottles still laced with beer beads and frozen dinner scraps. Rats that were becoming big as dogs off the Almasy's failure. Rats that became fat and happy while Seifer's stomach retreated against his spine.

Jacon would not notice the boy's contraband photo collection for some time- he paid little attention to the boy except to cuff him about the head when Seifer looked at him and to yell for more beer. He was too drunk the rest of the time to notice much of anything. His father did not take him fishing and only rarely threw dinner at him.

Jacon Almasy punished his dead wife through his living son.

**_Boy_**_._

_ "**Boy**, bring me more beer."_

_ "**Boy**, get your fuckin' eyes off me or I'll tear them out with my goddamned fingers."_

_ "**Boy**, get me a goddamn _**beer**_."_

_ **Boy**. Never son, or kid, or Seifer. Just boy. Sometimes it vaguely sounded like 'dog'._

As if Seifer had stolen the eyes of the ghost of his mother on purpose and wore them just to haunt his father. As if a five-year-old had any concept of real, bitter grief.

His father would teach him anger, though. His father taught him anger well.

He took his pictures into the field, sometimes- the woman was pretty and smiled at him from the plastic sheen of the photo, her light blonde curls framing her delicate face and drawing out the light from her emerald eyes into soft, gentle points. She was the only one that had ever smiled at him in his young life that he could remember. The skeleton boy sometimes smiled at him from the mirror, but that smile scared the shit out of him almost as much as his father did.

In fact, it was a daily game of Seifer's to avoid being seen- his role in life seemed destined to be as inconspicuous as possible.

But that was not the skeleton boy's dream. The skeleton boy wanted _everyone_ to see him.

The Skeleton boy was not afraid of his father. Just the opposite, in fact. The skeleton boy was fascinated with the failure that balled itself up in the dilapidated recliner, eyes fixed and glassy on the TV, which mostly played snow ball fights. He watched his father with a kind of sick fascination- watched the swell of his gut and the stump of his arm sink further into the torn leather. In the pictures, Jacon was slender, well-built, his brown eyes imbued with a healthy shine as he casually draped his arm around his wife and child. He looked nothing like the man who ruled his home from a rickety recliner and an iron stump. Sometimes Seifer wondered himself if it wasn't his father's skeleton walking around the house, too eroded by failure to hold anything but whisky in his bones.

Sometimes his father talked, and when he did, his favorite subject was Seifer. Stupid boy. Scared boy, too scared to stand up to his old man. Chicken. Rat face.

_You going to cry?__ Look at you. Crybaby. Just like a fucking woman._

_C'mere__, boy.__ What, you afraid of your old man? You piss-pants little son of a whore, I said c'mere!_

_You little chicken! What, you scared of your own shadow?_

If only Jacon Almasy knew about the shadows that chased his little boy.

His father's other favorite subject was the weakness of women, of their inherent frail flaws and how it caused them to die and ruin other people's lives. He claimed that his wife had struck a dagger through his heart, although to the extent of Seifer's young knowledge, his mother had died peacefully in her bed. She had lain on the small divan, quietly stroking his hair as she whispered something to him, probably a story or a song of some sort. Her hand was tremulous, weak, a caress that stilled eventually, like a chord stopped mid-tremble. His mother's unfinished symphony was left in the gentle curl of her fingers, notes tangled in the hair and the brain of her little boy that slowly listened to her heartbeat die. That was what Seifer remembered of his mother, the gentle beat in her breast against his cheeks, the symphony that stopped and took his happy world with it. He remembered the opus of her death…it had meant the death of his world, in a way.

Cancer was a word that still didn't mean much to Seifer…it was a mysterious, invisible sickle that cut slowly, cutting stalks of vitality until the whole field fell. His mother fell gently, quietly, as he had guessed had been her way during her life. A flower bending, tumbling softly into darkness. It still didn't make much sense, and thinking of it only made him angry, angry at the love that could have been his but wasn't.

His father found them that way coming home from work- Seifer curled up on Aya's sunken breast, sleeping, his wife's fingers curled in the soft down of her little boy's hair. Seifer had woken up. His mother had slept forever. Seifer didn't think his father ever forgave him for that.

His father's drunken attempts at domestic fables and his mother's own softly spoken fairy tales mingled to produce a thoroughly twisted child, caught somewhere between a broken home and pixie dust. Seifer conjured up her fairy tales, tales that came from books under his beds about knights that saved people and people that loved them for it. The knights were always gallant, larger than life, strong heroes that didn't worry about TV dinners or deadbeat fathers. Their greatness shadowed their past-all that mattered was their strength. That was apparently not his father's message, but one Seifer gleaned from the drunken stutter all the same.

Women were weak. They needed protection. His father was weak, too. He needed protection from women. Therefore, his father was the weakest of them all, a fact that unnerved and resolved Seifer's young aspirations; protect your father- don't be like him.

He dreamed great things, hidden by the wind in the cornstalk maze. He would become a knight. He would become greater than all the knights that had ever lived. He would protect all the women that lived in towers that got whisked away by men in black capes and lizards that spit fire. He would even go back and protect his mother from death. Then his father would look at him and be proud. His mother would smile and say that she loved him and his father would take him fishing and grow his arm back. And then Seifer could rest, after he saved them all. It was fucking wonderful, the fairy tales his mind dreamed up.

The skeleton boy, however, did not want to save his father.

His father was a disease, a poison in his veins that was going to transform him into the bitter beer-swelling bastard that every day threatened to gouge out his boy's eyes if he didn't quit looking at him with them. Seifer Almasy was only one step out of the gutter, and only a half step away from trash, and he had known this all his life. The seeds for failure were already sown within him- he had only to wait for the roots to take hold.

He could have, too, if it hadn't been for the damned kindness of his dead mother and of the books whose pictures spoke of dream worlds that exceeded his wildest expectations. Such people existed. Such people **lived** these fucking fairy tales, somewhere, he told himself, folding up the pictures in the downy creases of his jacket and pining himself away in a deserted field. He had seen pictures in magazines of fathers and sons that went fishing on clear, sun-dappled lakes- of pail lunches and rubber waders and of nice stories and tuna fish sandwiches.

His father had once told him that he had the devil in his eyes.

Seifer had diligently looked for such a force, but found nothing within the light green orbs that would suggest any sort of demonic presence. He was left to conclude that either his father was crazy, or the rest of the world was. Frankly, Seifer believed the first, and as his father's son, he could probably expect no better fate. He grew to accept the poison that ran in his blood like a kind of sixth toe, a genetic vision of failure to come. The skeleton boy, however, had bigger dreams. The skeleton boy was going to become a knight.

His father was simply another dragon to be cut down.

Strangely, it was his father's own hand that ended up dealing the blow. His father became convinced by his infrequent paranoia that the boy was stealing beer from his stash in the pantry, (when in all likelihood the now nearly dog-sized rats had probably rolled a bottle or two away.) Jacon tore into Seifer's room with a latent fury unequaled by any cripple, (emotional or otherwise) of his time. Jacon Almasy was both sorts of crippled, unfortunately, and even more unfortunate for his son was that Jacon happened upon Seifer's stolen collection of 'memory porn'. Seifer soon found out that his raps to the skull were nothing compared to the fury his one-father was capable of. Seifer had walked in just as a photo of he and his mother in the garden dropped to the floor from his father's shaking hands, and his father had snatched him before he could run, hands hard and trembling at his throat.

That night, his father beat his son almost to death. Seifer had stopped struggling almost immediately, but had stared at the ceiling, keeping his eyes open until a particularly landed punch caused him to scrunch them back shut. In all honesty, Seifer could remember very little about the beating itself, only that his father had eventually looked scared and stumbled away, muttering under his breath phrases that Seifer was still hard pressed to remember.

With shaking hands, Jacon Almasy sat in his chair and blew his brains out with his revolver.

His son, meanwhile, crawled beneath the kitchen card table.

That night, the skeleton boy watched with a fractured collarbone and two broken fingers as his father's bloody brains ran like a river all over the linoleum tile, watching the gore as one watches a stranger discipline their child- with distant and horrid fascination. His own blood ran with the slope of the old house- at his own horizontal angle, their blood pools seemed to run together, to mix into a gleaming puddle of guilt.

Bad blood.

Inwardly, the skeleton boy rejoiced. His father, his roadblock to greatness, was gone. He was free. Free, and beaten almost beyond belief beneath the shadows of a nearly three-legged card table, but free nonetheless. The boy that stole photos of smiling dead women and kept his eyes off his father was gone. The boy that had hated the world remained; the strong one, the one that gazed at his dead father without tears or remorse even as the dead child inside him cried for help. Crying was a damned joke. His father had never helped him when he was alive. His ghost would be a piss poor aid indeed.

Now that his father was dead, and he could look at him as much as he liked. He could gaze at failure incarnate and keep his eyeballs in his sockets.

Seifer would miss his father at first- not because he had been a good parent, but simply because he was the only thing left in Seifer's life that held a sense of familiarity. The abuse had gotten common, a crack on the head almost perversely like a hug. The skeleton boy, however, did not miss his father at all. The blood that pooled beneath his father's curled hand might as well have been spilled milk.

And damned if he was going to cry over it.

He would never know why his father did it, whether from guilt, shame, or simply from a broken will to live that had never been very strong to begin with. But Seifer Almasy was nobody's **boy**, not ever again. He was free. His destiny was as wide and as open as the fields of Balamb.

The police that eventually pried him from the shadows of the card table took him to Matron, to her quiet cabin by the sea and her quiet voice that rolled like the waves. The curve of her neck smelled faintly familiar- the smell of mother, the smell of home. He didn't trust it. Matron came to know the shadows of his past and guessed at the shadows that danced inside him. Matron coaxed him from the shadows of her own kitchen table and nursed him with milk and oatmeal cookies until his stomach rounded out, stocky and swollen with food as a child's stomach should have been. The memory of the rats and the image of his father's lifeless corpse faded away. The life before him became a dream.

Seifer swore he would never eat another TV dinner as long as he lived.

Matron was kind, and very gentle. Matron did not yell, or hit, or cuss, or throw empty bottles at his head. He could look at her all he liked, and so he did. She was pretty, beautiful even, like the princesses in the fairy tales. Really, her love terrified him. It did not seem real, tangible, and occasionally he would try to break it, just to see if it was was.

Matron did not much like the skeleton boy, and thus the dark child was eventually pinned back, away from Matron's prying eyes. But the shadow stayed, and grew impatient for glory. Surely glory was not to be had here at the orphanage. Surely these children, these twits, knew nothing about dreams or dreaming.

Seifer was discovering that his new ambitious god required energy: the skeleton boy ran on hate. And so he hated. He hated Zell for crying and Squall for not caring.. He hated Selphie for smiling and Irvine for being Irvine and Quistis for being bossy. When he wasn't hating, he was angry. He was angry that he had a one-armed drunk of a father and angry that he was no one's son.

He hated Quistis' sandcastles and he hated Ellone's stories. He hated them because they were war orphans, orphans that probably had loving parents ripped away from them by wars. Good parents, ones they missed.

Seifer Almasy didn't have anyone to miss, and nobody missed him.

He hated everything, everything that he couldn't break and everything that broke him, but it wasn't enough. He was still angry, still a child, and still very much stuck with the last name Almasy. However, he hated it even more when Matron was disappointed with him. And so, struggling, he pinned the skeleton boy back into the shadows, locking him up. He could hear the boy every now and again, whispering darkly in his ear with his dead mother's voice.

_You've got to get out of here._

_You've got to **be** something._

_Don't want to be your father, do you, **boy**?_

The Skeleton boy had eventually quieted, leaving behind shreds of his ambition and bits and pieces of the memories that shaped him. But Seifer Almasy had never really stopped being angry.

And the skeleton boy had never really left.

Ironically, it would be Matron's shadow that would once again coax him from beneath the metaphorical card table, calling the shadows of his childhood to stand at her side. Only, this Matron was less than maternal. She poured acid in his cuts and her voice was like razor blades slashed at his ear drums. Glory was a fickle bitch, after all.

Paradoxically, she too, would ridicule him in the end, just as his father had, scorning him as he knelt before her, cursing his weakness. Still, the monster that was Ultimecia would never compare to the monster that was Jacon Almasy in Seifer Almasy's mind.

Seifer shifted on his bed, threading his fingers behind his neck in a contemplative curl. He stared at the ceiling, trapped somewhere between the ghosts of yesterday and the shadows that presently lurked across the white spread of ceiling that met his troubled eyes. It all ran together, every moment, every sigh and scream-

_"What are you looking at, **boy**?"_

_"Does the boy think he's all grown up? Does he think he's a man?"_

_"Make them bleed-"_

_"Destroy them all-"_

_"You've failed me, **boy**-"_

Seifer closed his eyes. He was almost twenty-one now, and running out of hate. He was almost out of anger. And when that ran out, what was left?

He was no longer a child. No longer a knight. And, all things considered, he had never been much of a man.

_What was left?_

In the small SeeD room at the end of the hall, a man with no identity searched for his in the ceiling tiles.


	21. Routines and Regrets

Disclaimer: If I owned Squaresoft, I'd buy a new muse.

Dreaming of that face again.

It's bright and blue and shimmering.

Grinning wide

And comforting me with its three warm and wild eyes.

On my back and tumbling

Down that hole and back again

Rising up

And wiping the webs and the dew from my withered eye.

In... Out... In... Out... In... Out...

A child's rhyme stuck in my head.

It said that life is but a dream.

I've spent so many years in question

to find I've known this all along.

-Tool, Third Eye

Chapter 19

It was a routine performed in silence, a slow, mindless ritual intended to occupy her thoughts in the silent hours of the morning before the first warning bell sounded to rouse the new cadets. She poured herself out of bed and slipped on her slippers, setting out a single saucer and cup and setting the kettle to boil on her small (Garden-banned) hotplate before turning to the shower. After toweling, she brushed her teeth and ran a fine-toothed comb through her hair- one hundred and fifty strokes before pinning it up and ironing out her flips as she listened for the whistle of the copper kettle. She dressed in silence- undergarments, socks, skirt, blouse, jacket, zipping up her boots and securing Save the Queen on her belt buckle before walking over to the stove to pour her tea. Peppermint or Green sometimes, or an expensive brew of Ginger Peach from a little shop in Esthar- a gift from Xu. The tea was calm, soothing. More importantly, it was part of the routine.

She drank her tea in silence, rushing the burning liquid down her throat as she watched the minutes flutter by on the cardslots of her alarm clock. If she was an Instructor, she would have looked over lesson plans or graded a few remaining papers. As it was, these days, she usually stared at the wall and thought too much. Being alone was an art form, one Quistis Trepe had worked on perfecting since she was ten years old. Each stroke, each brush of solitude was a perfect arc of habit, a curve of seclusion on a canvas of pure, white isolation.

Despite her practice, she was still a terrible painter.

This morning, she sat on the couch, tracing the woven pattern of the rayon throw. The whistle of the kettle was strangely absent from the small stove burner, and she was still dressed in her pajamas, legs folded under her as she leaned her upper torso against the side, her shoulder hooked around the slender white arm of the small sofa like a comfortable pretzel.

She'd gotten a phone call not long after Seifer left- Squall's monotone voice telling her that the preliminary investigation team had discovered that her single witness, Mr.Drefford, had been beaten to death in his house with his own tire iron. The news had fallen hard and cold in her stomach- who would have a reason to kill a harmless old man? Someone, apparently, and Quistis had a sinking suspicion that it was not unrelated to the IGCS scenario.  Why was it always innocents that paid for politics?

When she inquired about the man's dog, there had been a pause on the phone, then the news that the dog had been locked in the garage and was going to be euthanized. Sadness had prickled at the news, both for Mr.Drefford and for Garden.  Without a witness, Garden was in even worse shape, and without a master, the dog was as good as dead. Sleepily, she told Squall to order action halted on the dog until morning, and that the dog was not to be euthanized under any circumstances. Squall had said nothing in response, but she took his lack or response for an agreement before replacing the receiver. She didn't know why she'd ordered the dog held, but the thought of the old man dying…and the dog, it didn't sit right in her stomach. If she'd stopped to think about it, she probably felt guilty.

Amazing, after years of desensitizing, death never failed to prick her shields. Or her conscience.

Quistis refolded her legs beneath her, sighing against her arms.

The cadets would be getting up now- some sneaking from the dorms of their companions and others rising early to meet friends and significant others for breakfast. Quistis woke up morning after morning and drank in the terrible emptiness of her double bed, stretching her arm out into the cold island of sheets before she forced herself into the routine. In that moment, however brief, she could feel just a little bit of her soul sink into the sheets, lost to the silence and the frigidity of the atoll of empty bed beside her.

Monotony, structure, routine- the very foundation upon which Quistis Trepe had built her life- was quickly crumbling with every year that passed. The quiet minutes with a cup of tea, once treasured, were now loathed- the late nights spent reading or filing reports entirely too quiet. The mornings were the worst- the cold bed and the quiet room a silent void. Each morning was a morning like any other, and yet, it somehow became even more intolerable than the rest, filled with the knowledge that she could not live like this forever…that she didn't want to.

Quistis' eyes drooped as she stared at the bowl of peaches in front of her.

Xu was right. She was terrible at being alone.

…

…

…

Seifer Almasy was no better off. He spent the night and most of the morning conjuring up most of his old demons, playing around with the shadows and seeing how long he could hold a memory in his mind before it burned. Dangerous game, recollection, especially when half the doors in your mind lead to demons.

He stared at the wall, green iris' flickering like a projector left on too long. It was a bitter show that played behind those bottle-glass colored irises, and an endless one.

Stupid, useless thing, remembering. And yet, he couldn't seem to stop.

The shadows cast an eerie light on the linoleum, moonlight swimming in the blood. The clock ticked softly, keeping the wrong time and checking off the seconds in blissful ignorance. He laid his swollen cheek back down onto the cold tile. The time didn't matter-it stopped in moments like this. It was the world that went on unaware..

Seifer shivered in his bed. He had only to close his eyes to lift up the old screens, the old slides of his life, the dim flickers like weak acid poured over a perpetually open wound. And he did- closed his eyes and tangled in his sheets as he replayed the horrific home videos in his brain.

He remembered Time Compression clearly, the spin and the press of eons against his skull, threatening to smash his brains. His vision faded, lurched, body tugged violently between forever and oblivion as he clawed through his mind and his body for some sense of sanity.

His vision had fuzzed, lurched, dulled, and once again his eyes had fixed on that very sight- the place in which, years ago, a part of Seifer Almasy had been lost forever. There, beneath the shadows, sandwiched beneath the thin, rusty legs of the table and the cool press of linoleum, he'd stared into the darkness as he watched once again the back of the black leather recliner. Watched the tapering arch of his father's only arm spit a steady stream of blood, his father's face obscured by the shadows. The heliotrope-colored glass of the beer bottles caught the moonlight, spitting a prism of red and green and brown all over the dirty tiles. His eyesight grew painful, all the objects and sounds concentrated into a screaming hum of sensation so loud he thought his skull would burst-

_Grass whipping his bare torso as he cut through the grass, the sound of laughter ahead of him and a swath of gold that fluttered like butterfly wings, teasing his fingertips-_

_Steel flashing as Hyperion cut down, silver fang bared and Leonhart's head open and bleeding onto the ground, as finally, finally, those cold blue eyes lit with fury and he swung back, brilliant pain lighting up his skull-_

_On his knees, the marble sheen of the palace floors gleaming like water as he looked up into her reflection, into her sick, dark eyes, waiting for her command like a mongrel, her voice the tether that would snap his neck-_

_A flash of raven hair, the scent of jasmine on her neck and she was laughing, grabbing his hand,_

_- then terrified, begging him not to take her, but it was too late, he was too far gone and it couldn't be stopped, nothing could be stopped--_

_The cornfields, stretching on forever, a maze of pain and shame and uselessness as he watched the crows rise up, their oily black wings beating at the blue sky and he knew he would die here-_

_And then a hand, her hand, reaching in front of him, beckoning him forward with her soft, dark eyes.__ She knelt in front of him, and the bloody picture of his father disappeared, surrounded by the sunlit walls of the orphanage. She smiled, the tilt of her lips filled with a strange, emotion, the love that he had forgotten. And he reached out-_

_And woke up, lying on his back in a cornfield in the backyard of a condemned shack, the distant caws of the crows stuffed like stale bread into his ears, muting all other sounds in oiled, uneasy silence._

Time Compression, it seemed, was not without a sense of irony. It had spit him back into the very fucking field that he'd spent his life trying to get away from. He woke up in the throes of an old nightmare…only to find it real again.

_The old house still stood, the siding rotting off in uneven sloughs of cedar wood plank. The house gave the impression of a gap-toothed face, glass teeth hung in shattered shards in the frame. Grass had grown up to his kneecaps, and the garden was now completely destroyed, weeds tangling in the roses and choking their branches. The tulips had long wilted beneath the thorned vines that coiled around the gates, twisting up towards the sky like forsaken arms._

_His gut shivered against his ribs just looking at the fucking place. All at once, he felt the sting at the back of his head and his father's gravelly voice ringing in his ears, the sound of bottles smashing and the stench of sweat and gin-_

**"Get over here, boy. Little worthless maggot. Well guess what, mama's boy? Mama's _dead_. Went off and left us, didn't she?"**

_Seifer narrowed his eyes. His old man was dead, and so was this house. Turn and walk away…walk out._

_But he walked forward._

_A few half-rotten boards had been hastily nailed up to deter intruders- but a few swipes of Hyperion quickly dislodged the barrier. He hesitated at the doorway, almost reluctant to encounter the ghosts that no doubt lingered in the shadows. But the house lay silent, save for the occasional groan of a board in the wind or the scuttle of leaves along the steps.  He took a deep breath, bracing himself._

_Bracing himself for what, he didn't know._

_The roof was partially caved in from over a decade of neglect and the fact that it had never been sturdy to begin with. The rain gutters spilled their water down into the kitchen room, where a thin, frail layer of lichen and moss had started to sweep along the walls. The clock was still ticking beneath a tangle of vines, the time still completely wrong. It had always been wrong._

_The pantry door was hinged open, scat and faded wrappers speckled all along the floor. One rat, half the size of a small dog, stood on its legs to regard him, whiskers sniffing as if greeting the man whose shadows still lingered in the walls. The small refrigerator had been left ajar, the bulb long broken. He nudged it open with the tip of Hyperion's blade, only to reveal a moldy stick of something and a few scattered beer bottles. _

_Get me a beer, **boy**__…_

_He kicked it shut so hard the door snapped off, sending a mass of rats scrambling between his ankles._

_His room had been left much the way he remembered it, a small cot with a few faded quilts draped over the top. He stopped when he saw the pictures, still scattered on the floor near the mattress. The wood planks were splattered with a dark, almost black stain, the mark of his blood from where his father had split open his lip and smashed his teeth against his gums. His eyes narrowed, closed so tight his eyes nearly crushed in their sockets. With a shaky hand, he knelt down, picking up a single dusty photograph- a picture of a young woman, her platinum blonde hair dusting the shoulders of a white turtleneck sweater, a little boy with sandy hair curled up in her embrace with a happy, cherubic smile on his face. _

_A grown man stared down at the pictures, bangs a light fringe against his frowning, scarred forehead as he gazed at the happy mother and child with a lost look on his face._

_When had he ever smiled like that? When the hell had he had a reason to?_

_He crumbled the photograph into his pocket, stalking back into the main room. He didn't go in his parent's old room. He hadn't been in there since she died. Too many ghosts whispered along the windowpane, and even at 18, he was scared shitless of the shadows that lurked beneath the bed in which she died._

_His breathing was laborious now, the rush of air harsh in his ears as he glared at the empty leather recliner. The dark, ancient bloodstains were still there, a murky pool on the oiled wood floor._

_Both their blood, soaked into the wood, a testament to a father's endless anger and his son's endless regrets._

_It was there, in the bloodstains- the same dark destiny that guided his father's crippled body was the same that coursed through his veins. Ultimecia was gone, dead, as shredded as his dreams, and he had fallen like a wingless bird, the descent long and bitter._

_…And now, here, he was lost…both his maker and his mistress long faded._

_He had wanted to prove himself so badly. To rise where his father had fallen, to succeed where his father had failed._

_And he had only fallen harder. Failed more. Been even angrier and a bigger wreck than his old man ever could have managed._

_He was so angry. This fucking **place**. His father gone, dead, unable to take the wrath that Seifer so desperately wanted to lay on him, to hear the words he wanted to scream in his old man's ears-_

_What, **boy**, you afraid of your own shadow?_

_"**Fuck you**!" he shouted, raising Hyperion and bringing it down with all his might, the blade sinking into the recliner with a terrible rip. He shouted again, burying the silver sword to the hilt in the cracked leather recliner. "**Fuck this place**!"_

_His father, the coward, the fuck, the abusive, worthless piece of shit, and he was so angry, and there was nobody but this fucking **house** to take his rage out on-_

_The television exploded as he brought the sword back and whirled, spewing shards across his cheeks, but he didn't feel it. He brought the sword down again, leather strips and down tumbling out like innards. He was screaming like a madman, rage trembling at his lips and lunacy lurking just behind._

Boy_…_

_"You worthless fuck! I hate you! _**I hate you!" **_He sunk to his knees, exhausted, blood running down his cheeks and the anger bursting out of him like scalding water. Drained, he looked down at his hands, half expecting a stump there._

_Hyperion glared up at him, its silver eye spitting back his reflection as his blood dripped down onto the edge in thin streaks. Images danced in there, in the liquid of his weakness, shadows playing across his face in the crimson reflection. He forced himself to look down, He saw the image of his father, smiling up at him. _

_The face of Fate._

_This is what you've become, Almasy. This is all you'll ever be._

_He shut his eyes, gripping hard, tangling his fingers around the image, pressing his palms hard against his father's reflection, against the failure he could feel seeping into his pores-_

**_Boy. Knight. Son. Failure._**

_He felt nothing. No pain, no anger, no bitter hate to fuel his blood. Nothing. It was gone. The only emotion he'd ever had to feel about most of his life, and it was gone._

_He opened his eyes, only to see that he had curled his hands around Hyperion's dulled edges, sinking his skin into the blade. Blood was beginning to pool along the blade's edge, and yet, he didn't feel anything. He pressed harder._

_No…he couldn't feel a fucking thing._

_Frowning, he tightened his grip, knuckles creasing white as hot blood oozed out between his fingers, dripping onto the floor._

_Nothing._

_He was terrified. _

_Tighter, tighter, and the blood boiled against his skin, hot, and he was dizzy-_

**Nothing**. He felt **nothing**.

It was the last time he had ever touched Hyperion…until his return to Garden.

Seifer stared at the clock on the desk beside him, the numbers a hazy blur.

He had to stop this fucking _thinking_.

He closed his eyes again. He tried to imagine the orphanage, the way it used to be. As fucked up as he was, that was probably his happiest time.

The pillars…..the gardens growing with beautiful flowers that were nice to look at but even more fun to pull up, Chicken Wuss whining his fool ass off…chasing Quistis around and bugging the shit out of Squall- Matron…Matron was there….smiling, hands folded as she watched her children play.

_And the ocean, combing the beaches and listening to the sound of the waves slap the rocks at night while the wind stirred silky patterns in the grass-_

**Bring me the children.**

_What?_

**Bring me the children.**

_The sea turned dark, spray slapping the rocks with a fury that threatened to swallow everything before it. He could hear Matron calling him, calling him away from the sea, but-_

**You hear the music, don't you?**

_He frowned, watching as a moonlit wave rose up like a silver fang._

**Dance, puppet.**** That's it. You see? You remember.**

_Laughter skidded across the water, chortling in the thunder of the waves as they reached out to shore, trying to suck him in. His knees almost crumbled against the torrent._

**Bring me the children, Almasy.**

_Knock, knock._

**Bring me the children.**

**_Knock, knock._**

His eyes flew open, sitting up in a flurry as the quick raps brought him to attention. He scrambled to his feet, opening the door and wincing as the crack of light invaded his eyes. A silver haired woman stood before him, frowning, her amber-colored eye peering at him with no small measure of concern.

Fujin had always been able to smell the memories on him- sense the sweat and tremble that was horror relived. Fujin had plenty of her own demons, and nobody knew that better than Seifer.

"SEIFER. SLEEPING?" asked the young woman, hands on her hips, an amused smile playing on her lips.

He wiped a hand across his eyes. _Not a fucking wink, _he thought to himself_._

Fujin nodded. "LEAVE." The young woman turned to go.

Hell, it wasn't like he was going to sleep anyway. "Nah, forget it, Fuj. I wasn't asleep anyway."

_Unfortunately._Truthfully, a nightmare would have been more reassuring.

_Almasy, you loony._He rubbed at his scar, tired and frustrated as he squelched a yawn. He had to get up for that stupid written test, anyway, and could probably look forward to Xu administering it….again. What was it? His fifth time taking the damned thing?

In fact, a glance at the clock told him he was going to have to take the thing in five minutes. Shit.

"What's up, Fuj?" he asked, cracking his eyes open little by little to accommodate the stinging fluorescent hall lights.

The woman turned back, awarding him a rare smile. "BREAKFAST. EXAM." Exclaimed the woman, and it was clear she was no longer asking. His longtime friend reached out for his wrist, attempting to drag him out into the hallway after her.

"All right, all right! Hyne, Fuj, lemme get my fucking _pants_ on."

…

…

…

The testing center was crammed full, mostly of the bleating little lambs Seifer had once (and still) scornfully referred to as 'rookie bed-wetters', all bleating and sharpening their pencils as if their little lives depended on it. Absently, he wondered if they'd still run around so fast with their heads off.

The room'd be quieter, anyway.

Fujin had agreed to wait in the hall for him at his assurance that the test would take no more than five minutes. That was his record, anyway. Shit, how many times had he taken this test? Six?

He plopped down in to a chair, propping his feet up onto the desk and smiling winningly at Xu as she all but threw the test pamphlet at his face.

"I'd tell you to try your best," she whispered, "But surely it doesn't take _that_ much effort on even _your_ part to fail."

"Touching _and_ trite," he quipped. "The life of a he-she must be taking its toll on you."

"At least I _have_ a life." She hissed. "Unlike the ring of failure you're so keen and winding around your throat."

He grinned, tapping his pencil against the desk in a deliberately irritating fashion. "Ooooh, yet another line about failure. I haven't heard _that_ one before."

"I'm sure that from the gutter, Almasy, you hear a lot of things."

"Did you get that line from a gum ball machine?" He clucked his tongue. "You got ripped off."

"I don't have time to deal with you," scowled Xu. "Just paint your exam by numbers and get the hell out of here."

Chuckling, Seifer opened the pamphlet to page one, eyes drifting lazily over the first paragraph.

Question one: Explain, as briefly and as expressively as possible, the reasons for a military establishment such as Garden. Please cite any political or socio-economical references and use both past and current justifications in the space below.

Fuck. Stupid short answer. Seifer quickly scribbled down a half-assed and completely phony sentence (if not retrospectively probably moving to the saps that graded these things) about the necessity of contract impartiality in a military establishment and the growing need for outside influence to stimulate small-town economy, as Garden contracted mostly small-scale operations like resistance movements.

Except for Sorceresses, but then again, Ultimecia had hardly proved to be a source of revenue for Gardens such as Galbadia.

Trying to stay awake, he numbly turned the pages, squinting as his vision blurred. He extended his arm, twisting the rest. He must have laid on it wrong. The damn thing hurt like a bitch.

Question 2.

**…….Bring me the children**…….

He glanced up. The _hell_?

A room full of bent heads and chicken scratching met his observations. Xu gave him a dirty look from her desk before turning back to her papers.

**You're losing it, Almasy****.**

_Question two: what is standard procedure for an unauthorized entry into a civilian establishment in an emergency situation?_

_A.) __None. Always obtain required paperwork before proceeding._

_B.) __Enter, leading right, using rules of Tri-D (disturb little, be defensive, and deliberate all procedure beforehand)_

_C.) __Enter through the back, two at a time, leading continuously in one direction until all rooms are cleared._

**……Bring me the children…….**

"Shut up." He hissed, aloud.

"Shhh!" muttered a male cadet next to him, looking annoyed.

"Get bent." Snarled Seifer. The young man went back to his test.

Seifer reluctantly went back to his, only to have the question pass completely through his brain.

Fuck it. When in doubt, C.

"How do you think you did, ya know?" asked Rajin, trying to cram an entire pancake into his mouth. His friend's eating habits bordered on plainly sub-human. He remembered a particular time they'd all wound up doing dishes in Harry's House of Grease, thanks to Rajin's uncanny ability to take an all-you-could-eat-buffet to the extreme. He and Selphie could probably clear out a whole fucking restaurant.

"What?" he snapped, pushing the eggs around on his plate with more boredom than interest.

"I said, ya know, how do you think you did?"

The blonde-haired man shrugged. "Damned if I know."

"PASS." Asserted Fujin, toasting to him with a lift of her orange juice.

"Yeah, we'll see," he sighed, but his friend's confidence did make him feel a little better. "What the hell are you guys doing up this morning, anyway?"

"Another sweep through the towns. They want SeeD to take care of the big stuff, 'cause the junior classmen are having trouble with 'em, ya know."

"MARLBOROS." Agreed Fujin, rolling her eyes. "PLANS?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. I guess I'll see what Quistis is doing." He watched Rajin and Fujin sit comfortably next to one another, enjoying a contented proximity that Seifer could never remember having with anybody. He found himself…almost jealous of his friends.

Rajin smirked. "Gonna spend some quality time with the Instructor, ya know?" His head bobbed as Fujin's open palm swept across the back of his head.

"IDIOT." She muttered.

"Wot I fay?" asked the giant, mouth full of another pancake. Tiny balls of buttermilk fluff sprayed the table in front of him.

"BARBARIAN. MISSION?" inquired Fujin, turning away from Seifer long enough to give Rajin a proper dirty look. "IGCS?"

"Yeah. The whole thing was pretty much set up to look like we did it. So now Cid's going down to some Tri-Garden meeting with Xu and Squall- "

Fujin blinked. "SERIOUS."

"Yeah. I guess they don't call a conference for just anything, ya know. The last time they called a conference was for the Sorceress trials-"

"IDIOT." Hissed Fujin, giving her boyfriend a swift kick to the shin beneath the table.

"OW! Cripes, Fuj! What'd I say _now_, ya know?"

"IXNAY." Snarled the young woman, punching him in the shoulder.

Seifer shook his head. "It's all right," he shrugged. "It happened." Something must have shone in his eyes, however, because Fujin's gaze focused sharply on him suddenly.

"OVER." Said Fujin, laying a hand on his shoulder and giving him a meaningful look. He knew Fujin was trying to console him- her physicality intended to comfort, but instead, it was stifling, pressing him back into the same corner he'd sat in this morning, reliving. This whole place was stifling- a musty attic filled with all the memories he'd never wanted to revisit.

He shrugged her hand off of him, shaking his head as he got to his feet. "Yeah, Fuj. I know. I'll see you guys later." He strode from the cafeteria, hands jammed in his pockets and no particular destination in mind, his friends' discussion echoing after him."

"BLABBERMOUTH."

"Hey! Ow! I've only got two shins, ya know!"

…

…

…

…

"You ever wonder where they get the ingredients to make this…_stuff_?" asked one very suspicious Zell Dinct as he held up a forkful of soggy eggs…or what the lunch lady had assured him _was_ eggs.

"I can guess." Replied Irvine, examining the bacon.

Quistis held up her head with a balled fist stuffed tiredly into her cheek, gazing resignedly at Zell and Irvine as they examined their trays and held up a discussion about cafeteria composition. A cinnamon roll sat between her elbows, untouched, as she spun a half-full coffee cup in front of her by the handle. Irvine and Zell were up early to help out on another eradication sweep through the mountains. With Trabia Garden off on other business, B. Garden had been contracted to handle the kills by neighboring towns. All but the very largest monsters had been weeded out by prospective SeeD cadets on drill runs, leaving the older SeeDs to deal with the larger, veteran creatures, many of which had developed quite a taste for people, according to reports.

Quistis had no real excuse for being up, aside from not being able to sleep. Normally she would have shot Zell for calling so early, but as it was, she was up and happy for a distraction. Quistis, being on inactive status and having no large mission reports to filter through for Squall (also seeing as she and the commander weren't on speaking terms), was left with nothing to do. Quistis didn't particularly envy her friends, but the prospect of being cooped up in Garden for the next few weeks was a less than pleasant thought.

Zell continued to stare at his eggs, his tattoo furrowing with his frown. "I can't wait to get back to Balamb. We're out of hot dogs."

Irvine looked up. "Zell, as far as you're concerned, they're _always_ out of hot dogs."

"Rub salt in the wound, why doncha?"

Irvine sighed tiredly. "I'll be glad when we get outta Trabia, too. I'll just bet they used the Trabia monster kills for the mystery meat last week."

Zell's eyebrow quirked as he set down his fork. "Dude, that's just disgusting!"

"Zell, do you _see_ any meat supply companies around here?" chuckled Irvine, folding his toast over a piece of sausage and calmly taking a bite. "Where do you think they get all of it, huh?"

Quistis shook her head. Irvine had once told Quistis of a Galbadian mission he'd been on, one that involved a desert stakeout that took weeks longer than expected, and the group had exhausted their rations in a short time. The hungry cadets had been forced to eat snakes, and other less than kosher desert life. Irvine said after that, nothing much made him squeamish. Irvine did, however, love capitalizing on _Zell's_ food eccentricities. Quistis held back a smile.

Zell poked at his own sausage patty, regarding it suspiciously. Quistis wryly wondered what would happen if Zell ever found out what was really in hot dogs.  She took a sip of her coffee and sighed, adjusting her position and trying to stay awake.

Irvine's dark blue eyes skittered her way. "What's a matter, Quis? You seem down an' out this mornin'."

The young woman in front of him just yawned, slouching a little more in her seat. "Just tired. I didn't get much sleep last night."

"Up, were ya?" Irvine cast her a wink over his plate.

Quistis moaned. She'd spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling, legs hanging off her small couch as she tried to figure out the paradoxes of Seifer Almasy- namely, why he'd run out of her room like a man possessed. Eventually, she'd slipped into a sleep that ended almost before it began. She'd woken up none the wiser, unfortunately.

"From what Selph told me, I'm guessin' your mission didn't go all that well." Continued Irvine, sensing that a change in topic would be welcomed. Whatever credit she denied Irvine in other matters, Irvine was most definitely the most perceptive out of their little circle.

"Understatement of the year, Irvine." She agreed, taking a sip of her now tepid coffee. Today's brew was apparently 'leather boot'. She did prefer it to 'Swamp Sludge', however.

"Any leads?" asked Zell, who had apparently given up on his plate in favor of a glass of orange juice, shooting Irvine a dirty look.

Quistis shrugged. "None. And now that I'm on inactive duty…" she sighed. "There's just something not right about this whole situation. I mean, who would want to make such a statement to the Gardens?"

"I dunno about that," said Zell. "But I'm sure that Garden's managed to piss off quite a few people over the years."

"Mostly local terrorists, though, and I don't know of many terrorist groups operating alone that'd have the funds to pull something like that off," said Quistis pensively. "And I just…I don't know, I just have-"

"A weird feelin'." Irvine finished for her. "Yep. I know the one. I'm sure Martine'll be nice about things at the meetin', though. When I was under him, he really was a decent guy."

Quistis nodded, but really, she had her doubts about Martine. The man was kind enough, but he had come down on Matron quite hard after the war, and all but sent a group of headhunters after Seifer until his release form charges were secured. Still, the unofficial bounty on Seifer's head remained. It had been strange to see Cid, normally such a relaxed and placid individual, so angry at the preliminary hearings regarding Matron and Seifer's actions during the Sorceress war. He'd faced Martine off more than once, hackles rising at the very mention of quarantining his wife to run some psychological tests and blood work before she could be acquitted. He'd been so protective of his Edea- any mention of forcing the already distraught woman to testify was since dropped.

Since then, Martine's and Cid's relationship had been strained. The fact that Balamb was holding both a Sorceress **and** an ex-convict could not speak well for relations with Balamb and Galbadia, either, but…nonetheless; blowing up a tower didn't seem Martine's style.

"And that Korbeil guy at Trabia…didn't he graduate SeeD a few years before you, Quis?"

She nodded. "Top of his class."

Zell shrugged his shoulders. "Doesn't make a damn bit a sense to me, but hell, what do I know, I just show up." Quistis knew Zell took his reputation as a mindless bruiser somewhat to heart- and needlessly so. The Zell she knew was a relaxed comedian, one whose compassion far surpassed many others she knew. Even as children, she vaguely remembered his attempts to cheer everyone up. (With varied success.) During the darkest of times, Zell had kept their group sane.

Zell reached over, the leather of his gloves warm against her scalp as he tousled her hair. "Don't be such a worry wart, Quis. It'll turn out, huh?"

"Yes, I suppose you're right," she replied as she stared down the rim of her coffee cup once more, lifting her head to offer him a tired smile.

The first bell rang, a loud, shrill cry that made several students groan. Irvine crumpled up his napkin as he stood and tossed it on his tray. "Time for Operation SeeD clean up."

Zell grinned back at her, gesturing expressively. "Also known as 'Blow-up the Big Fuckers!'"

Quistis laughed. Zell's interpretive military jargon usually earned him a reaction from Quistis, if no one else.

Irvine turned and regarded her seriously for a moment as Zell rocked on his heels, working the leather of his gloves as he glared around the cafeteria for suspicious happenings. He still hadn't ruled out cafeteria espionage, and as far as he was concerned, everyone was a suspect.

"Now Quistis, you an' I both know that you haven't been yourself lately. You know you can talk to me, eh?"

"Yes." Replied Quistis. "I know that, Irvine, and I appreciate the offer."

Irvine's eyes switched from somber to mischievous in a matter of seconds. "'Sides, you don't start taking care of yourself, I'll sic Selphie on you."

"You wouldn't."  _Why don't you just infect me with the happiness plague_?, she thought sullenly.

His face broke out in his typical easy going grin. "You know I would, darlin'."

"You're an evil man." She said sternly, but she was smiling.

"And don't you forget it," he chuckled, tipping his hat to her as he strode out the cafeteria, Zell trailing behind him.

Quistis gave a chuckle as she waved her friends off, turning back in her seat to look into a pair of dark eyes across from her. She jumped back a little, sloshing her coffee all over the glossy tabletop.

"Hyne! You're as jumpy as a Cactuar on speed. Gimme that cup." Insisted Xu, snatching the mug out of Quistis' hand.

"You," began Quistis darkly, pointing an accusing finger at her friend. "Thanks ever so much for putting Doctor Kadowaki on my scent. Now I'm quarantined in this Chocobo coup for the next three weeks, not to mention so shot up with those drug cocktails of hers I wouldn't pass a toxicology test on a prayer. And that's even if I _try_ to override her medical authority."

Xu glared back at her. "Just watching out for you. Hyne knows _you_ won't do it."  Quistis rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Xu was right, after all.

Besides, they both knew that being placed on inactive status wouldn't stop her from doing what she wanted, anyway.

Xu looked up suddenly, eyes focusing on someone across the cafeteria. "Hey, Nida! Over here!" she shouted, giving the tall, dark-haired man a little wave. Nida smiled, shyly putting up his hand as he grabbed his tray and started over towards them.

It was never lost on Quistis that on a normal day, where one could find Xu, one could usually find Nida, and vice versa. It was common Garden gossip that the two were an item. Although, the two were so bloody professional that Quistis had never been exactly able to discern the nature of their relationship, and until recently, she'd been too tactful to ask.

Well, if Xu wanted to discuss _her_ love life (or lack of one), then why not see what the shoe looked like on the other foot?

"_You've_ been spending an awful lot of time with Nida lately," she pointed out, hoping to trap Xu into a corner and widdle the information out of her. She put on her best interrogation face, tearing off a corner of her cinnamon roll and preparing for a rigorous investigation. She'd cracked resident drug lords and terrorist leaders before…Xu would be a piece of cake.

Xu smiled at her, resting her chin on her hand as she gazed over at Quistis. "Well, he is a bit of a tool, but he's phenomenal in the sack."

Quistis promptly choked on her sticky bun. After several gulps of Xu's water and a few hard claps to the back, Quistis finally sat back in her chair, still coughing. She hadn't expected it to be _that_ easy. "I swear, between you and Seifer, I'm never going to be surprised at anything anyone says ever again."

Xu smiled, spreading a dollop of cream cheese on her bagel and looking thoughtful. "You know, funny you should mention Seifer-"

Nida set his tray down between them, looking concernedly at Quistis. "Quistis, are you all right? I saw you coughing over here-"

Xu just laughed. "Swallowed her roll wrong. A SeeD at fifteen, and she's still learning out to eat at twenty-one. Ironic, isn't it?"

Quistis gave her friend a death glare. "About Seifer. How did he do on his SeeD written exam? Did he pass?"

"The boy wouldn't pass with 'flying colors' if he were the lead drummer in the gay pride parade." replied Xu contemptuously. "But, yes, he did _pass_."

Quistis smiled a truly happy smile that she didn't use often. In fact, thought Xu, she didn't use it often enough, and if it took that stupid lapdog succeeding…

"Thank you, Xu. I'll leave you two to your breakfast." She said, waving as she walked out.

"What was that all about?" asked Nida curiously, looking back at Xu.

Xu shrugged. "Loss of oxygen to the brain, I suppose."

Nida's face lit up with a small smile, enigmatic in his own quiet way as he buttered his toast. "Garden's not taking off for another two hours. I thought, uh, maybe we could go over the maps and, uh-"

The dark-haired woman in front of him returned the smile over the rim of her coffee cup. "Your room or mine?"

Quistis finished up some odds and ends around Garden, then walked aimlessly through the Quad.  After that, she set to browsing the library, running her fingertips along the aisles of book spines, lost in thought and frustrated at the lack of direction that the day was taking. As an Instructor, she had been constantly busy, but it had been a pleasant sort of hectic- scheduling her classroom hours, going over lesson plans, helping her students with their studies and occasionally their personal problems. She missed eating lunch in her classroom and seeing the faces of her students every morning. Her desire, her ambition, had not faded with time. 

Just her chances, it seemed.

She checked her watch. Garden would probably be departing soon, back to Balamb. She wondered what Seifer was up to. She'd told him not to bother meeting in the classroom that day. Having learned most of the up-to-date protocol and improved his blade skills (according to Squall), there would be no need for her daily instruction any longer. She had followed Cid's orders as best she could, helping him to adapt and making sure, albeit through somewhat unconventional means, that he was up to date on all new protocol. Not that Seifer had ever really needed it. She was sure he would have managed fine on his own, and Cid knew it. She had been, in essence, a highly specialized babysitter, one Cid knew would satisfy the council members.

Quistis sighed. It was an empty feeling, not being needed, even if it was Seifer Almasy and likely that he had never needed her at all. As her student, he'd made her uneasy. Now he made her just as uneasy, although not quite in the same manner as he had before. It was...different now, in a way that was difficult to explain.

She found him where she thought she would, up in the second level classroom anyway despite the non-_necessity_ of his presence, legs propped up on the desk as he stared out the window. The sunlight's heavy glare off of the snow only intensified the shock of blonde hair that bobbed down in his eyes, the knit of his brows fastened into a contemplative frown.

"Congratulations on your SeeD exam, Seifer," she said, walking into the classroom.

He didn't look up. "Just another fucking hoop." He'd never had a problem with the written exam, anyway. It was an inability to follow orders that got him dismissed every time. Seifer Almasy was far from stupid, but was most certainly knee-deep in stubborn.

A tension had grown up between them, made potent by last night's strange events. Quistis sighed. It seemed theirs was to be a relationship of half finished sentences and equally incomplete emotion, snippets and oddments of sentiment and even fainter grasps of what the other person was thinking. They were constantly at the cliff's each, throwing pebbles at each other's shoes with every sentence.

Quistis leaned back against the wall next to the window, resolve hard in her features. "Well, if you choose to regard them that way-"

He glanced over at her. "It isn't a matter of _choice_, Trepe. Not for people like me."

People like him? Ah yes, the failure factor, the one he wouldn't let himself forget. "Seifer…." She sighed. "That's only because you choose to see it that way,"

He stood. "And _you_ say that because _you_ choose to see it that way." He snapped. "I don't know what turned you into such a fucking optimist, but-"

"Where you're concerned-" she interrupted.

The crackle of the com system interrupted their discussion.

"This is Nida. Notice to all faculty and staff: B. Garden will be taking off to Balamb Base in approximately seventeen minutes. Arrange your schedules accordingly. That is all."

Quistis smiled, remembering that the last time that Garden had left, they'd left Zell behind. Zell had been shopping in Dollet, and ended up chasing after the flying garden in a stolen scooter, attempting to cast Float on it. Needless to say, the idea hadn't worked, and the group had watched a frantic Zell take flight for a good five minutes before crashing into a light pole. The charade, luckily, had only ended up in a sprained wrist. Between that and the t-board incident, however, Zell was having a hard time living it down- especially where Quistis, Selphie and Irvine were concerned.

Seifer frowned, glancing out the window. "They've got Nida driving this over-sized top?"

Quistis shrugged. "Better him than Selphie."

"Good point." He agreed. He stood, rolling his shoulders and looking at her out of the corner of his eye as she turned to leave. "Uh, so, what are you doing the rest of the day?"

She stopped, surprised. "Well, I suppose I thought I would do some research in the library- see if there have been any other suspicious activities reported in the areas as of late that would tie in- see if perhaps any military anniversaries coincide with the date of the IGCS destruction."

"Oh." He said, rubbing at the back of his neck. An awkward pause. "Well, see ya."

The engines rumbled beneath their feet, the primary engines beginning to warm . Quistis felt the vibrations in her toes. Seifer was looking back out the window, looking almost pointedly disinterested.

She tilted her head at his strange behavior. "You know, two pairs of eyes are better than one-"

He glanced up, grinning. "Well, all right, Trepe- you don't have to beg."

 "I _wasn't_-"

"Hurry up, Trepe!" he yelled, already ahead of her. She shook her head, exasperated, but she was smiling as she caught up with him.

…

…

…

Quistis turned a corner sharply, forcing Seifer to keep up with her, even with his longer strides. "Call me crazy, but I'm pretty damned sure this isn't the way to the library."

"Very astute, Mr.Almasy. We're going to Shipping."

"What the hell for?"

"I'm shipping you off to the D.S. Research Center."

"Har har."

She turned around. "I need to have something brought here, that's why."

They went through a small set of glass doors adjacent to the cafeteria, into a small, boxy-looking room with millions of scraps of papers fluttering in the wind of a small desk fan. Arya looked up from a stack of papers, giving Quistis a small, friendly smile. Mahria and Zir, two of her former students (who had also been avid Trepies) also looked up from filing.

"Hello, Quistis. What can I do for you?"

Quistis smiled. "Is there anywhere you _don't_ work, Arya?"

The young woman just smiled. "Well, actually, I'm just filling in for Luri today. She's a bit under the weather."

Mahria and Zir were at the desk in a flash. "What would you like, Miss Quistis?"

Seifer smirked. _Miss_ Quistis?

Quistis seemed unphased by the Trepie worship. "I'd like to have you contact the officials conducting the investigation concerning the IGCS. I wish to make a request for evidence."

"All right." Said Arya, pulling out a small stack of papers and pulling the cap off of her pen. "What specific item are you requesting?"

"A dog." Said Quistis simply. "And-"

Mahria and Zir looked confused. "A _dog_, Miss Quistis?"

Quistis looked up from the paperwork. "You don't have to call me Miss Quistis, Zir. I've told you that before." She turned back to the short, brown-haired girl behind the desk. "Yes. The dog once belonged to a witness of mine, Mister Drefford, who I understand is recently deceased. I'd like to…put on hold…his dog." She wasn't sure when she had made up her mind, but she figured it was the least she could do for the old, spritely fellow who had tried to be such a help in her investigation. She smiled. "They'll know what I'm talking about, and I highly doubt they want to keep it for evidence any longer than they have to. Please request that a good home be found for him. As for what I need, I want all and any of Mr. Drefford's records copied and sent here."

"Okay." Agreed Arya. "Relevant information pertaining to request?"

"Quistis Trepe. ID number 0165414, part of IGCS mission team. Mission number 10545682. I have clearance."

The young woman scribbled down the information, and nodded, handing Quistis the clipboard for signing.

"Oooh, you're requesting the dog as evidence for psychiatric evaluation?" asked Mahria, eyes shining with awe.

Quistis frowned at her, scrawling her signature.  "No." she said simply. "I just want the dog to find a good home. I want the **records** for analysis. Thank you, Arya."

Seifer resisted a snicker.

They walked down the hall in surprisingly companionable silence.

"Miss Quistis, huh?"

"Shut up."

He sneered. "What the hell were you thinking with the dog, anyway?" he asked.

Quistis shrugged, giving him a sheepish smile. "I'm not sure, actually. I'm sure they'll find a good home for it in Tromedia. I just feel so badly about that man…I suppose that's my way of thanking him. It was very evident that he cared a lot about the dog…and well, I don't know…I suppose it's silly."

Seifer shrugged. "It's a nice idea, I guess. 'Sides, Rinoa has that stupid bitch Angelo here, if all else fails."

"Oh, the dog won't be coming here." Quistis smiled, bemused at both his feelings for Rinoa's dog and his admission of her 'kindness'. "I take it that you and Angelo didn't leave on the best of terms?"

"Fucking mutt tried to run off with my shins every time I saw the waste of fur." He scowled. "We going to the library now, or what?"

"Yes." Said Quistis, laughing and thinking how nice it was to have someone along with her to spend the day with.

Even if it was Seifer Almasy.

…

…

…

"Hyne. Do they put _tar_ in here?" Seifer eyed his mug of coffee speculatively, watching the light skip across the liquid like swamp sludge.

That remark won a smile from Quistis, who looked up from her position next to the terminal. "That's one theory," she replied, switching on one of the monitors and setting her own mug onto the desk beside her.

After an uneventful search in the library to find unusual dates that would explain the culmination of terrorist activity, they'd decided, or rather, Quistis had decided, to get coffee and sandwiches and head to an unoccupied classroom. Seifer had wound up stealing the coffee machine from the Instructor's lounge and between Quistis scolding him and laughing at him, the two had managed to make a pot of coffee. Or rather, Quistis had. Seifer wasn't much for technology, even one as innocent as a coffee maker.

It was unusual watching Seifer voluntarily leaf through library books, brow furrowed and eyes flickering across the text. Seifer Almasy was far from stupid- she'd known that from the moment he'd sat in her class, eyes bored and glittering with the desire for a challenge. It was just strange to see him acting studiously… without her whip wrapped around his throat as inspiration.

Setting down his book, Seifer scraped up a chair and flipped it backwards, sitting close as he watched the monitor flicker on.

"I still can't believe you stole the coffee maker."

"You said you wanted coffee."

"I didn't want _stolen_ coffee."

"Oh, don't get your panties in a twist, Trepe. Garden's not going to go into Red Alert over one fucking coffee pot."

"You've obviously never met Instructor Green."

**Welcome to B. Garden database. Please enter your username and password.**

**/Access: 0165414, SeeD Quistis Trepe./ **

**Password: **

**Welcome, SeeD Quistis Trepe! You have fifty-four new messages.**

"Stupid spam," muttered Quistis.

Seifer chuckled. "Don't you mean 'Trepie love poems'?"

"Shut up." She muttered, scrolling up to locate Balamb's search engine base, a limited collection of news databases and other pages compiled by Nida, Bloc, and Arya, Garden's resident hackers.

**ENTER SEARCH CRITERIA. **

Quistis chewed her lip, thoughtfully. "I'm not entirely sure what to look for," she admitted. "It's not as if an organization is just going to advertise an anti-Garden agenda, especially not with recent developments."

Seifer took a bite of his sandwich. "Hell if I know. Just try 'Garden' or something for now. We can weed out the searches."

"All right."

**SEARCH FOR: GARDEN.**

Both watched with impatient eyes as the hourglass icon dumped its sand at a leisurely pace.

"I think it froze up." Muttered Seifer, peering at the screen.

"Well don't _touch_ it, it only makes it take longer."

"I swear, technology's just another fucking synonym for 'headache.'

"You may be on to something for a change."

"What do you mean, '_for a change'?"_

**YOUR SEARCH YIELDED 1,638,901 RESULTS.**

"Oh, shit."

Quistis just sighed.

…

…

…

"What flavor is this one, old shoe? I think it's getting _worse_." grumbled Seifer, making a face as he downed his tenth cup of coffee.

The two had been sitting in the empty classroom for over four hours, pouring over the internet, taking turns scanning the content. Although Seifer had managed to find several exhibitionist sites featuring cadets of Balamb posing for a hazy web cam (much to Quistis' chagrin, since some of the girls were old students of hers). And although Quistis had turned up a 'Garden Sux' site, none of the many sites displayed anything akin to the stealth or resembling any sort of organized hatred towards Garden, Balamb specifically. Both Galbadia and Trabia's link-up system was still frozen, and Quistis nearly smashed the keyboard trying to hack it.

Three pots of coffee and twice as many bathroom trips later, they were no better off than when they started, and they were both getting headaches from staring at the screen.

It was odd, this new comradery. Odd, thought Quistis, but not entirely unpleasant. Having had Seifer Almasy as an enemy and as an (albeit tentative) comrade, she'd come to prefer the latter.

Quistis leaned back in her chair, trying to ease the kinks from her shoulders. "An entire day…and nothing." She groaned, throwing her hands up in frustration.

"Well I wouldn't say nothing," yawned Seifer. "We did get to see those nice photographs of-"

"My head superimposed on some bimbo's body, yes." Replied Quistis irritably, taking another drink of coffee as she leaned forward to scroll down the fifty-fifth screen they'd seen that day. "I just can't help thinking there's something that we're overlooking." She sighed, tilting her head back to regard the ceiling and giving Seifer an excellent view of her white, exposed throat.

He stared at it, vision hazy as he imagined the fragile heartbeat contained within that fine porcelain-colored silk. He stared hard, vision blurring almost painful as he imagined the pulse in her neck, soft and sweet, a melody he could crush with just a flick of his wrist, and something hot flared in him-

**Bring me the children.**

He blinked.

The _children_. Seifer leaned forward, too caught up in his thoughts to notice her proximity. What was it with the fucking _children_?

Quistis frowned, taking in the almost glassy look in his eyes. "Earth to Seifer? Let's call it a night." He didn't respond, just stared blankly at the screen. "Seifer?" Tentatively, she waved a hand in front of his eyes. Getting no response, she turned back to the terminal, preparing to log out.

"Search for missing children." Ordered Seifer suddenly.

"But why-? There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest-"

"Put it in for the search criteria."

"Seifer," began Quistis. "You can't think that the little boy in Trabia had anything to do with…"

"Just do it." He snapped, rubbing his temples.

Slightly stung by his curtness, Quistis quickly called up a search of the most recent abductions. One minute he was joking, the next he was biting her head off-

TRABIA-MISSING BOY-A missing boy, thought to have been abducted by his birth mother-

**_DOLLET-MISSING GIRL, DROWNED? A little girl, thought to have drowned in the lake-_**

**_DOLLET-BROTHERS GONE?_****_ Two brothers, missing a week since a camping trip-_**

"Seifer, there are thousands of mission people-"

"That one." Said Seifer, pointing. Quistis followed his finger.

**"CRISIS SHELTER-3 CHILDREN TAKEN."**

Local police in Winhill today were baffled by the disappearance of three children from a crisis shelter, who apparently disappeared one week ago today.

_"There's no interest in crisis on the homeless level," said Tiramier Brason, head of the Winhill's Center for the Homeless." Without family members to lobby for them, children and adults are often lost with no records or way of recovery-"_

"Scroll down," ordered Seifer. Quistis gave him a dirty look, but complied.

_"Zarel, 5, Mishca, 7, and Dilu, 3, all disappeared some time during the night of December 12th. There are currently no leads and at this time local authorities have not declared an official search."_

"That's terrible." Said Quistis quietly. "But I don't see how-"

Seifer leaned forward, ignoring her and putting his hand over Quistis' to guide the mouse. She stiffened at the contact, staring dumbly at the screen, but Seifer didn't seem to notice.

"**MOTHER REPORTS TWO MISSING FROM WOMEN'S SHELTER**" _December 19th. _

Quistis bit her lip, attempting to ignore the warmth of his hand on top of hers, the beat of his heart channeled through his fingers onto her skin.

_Balamb.__ Grievance filed by Sherey Guarsen, a single mother seeking refuge in a local shelter. Claimed that on the night of December 19th, her two daughters, Sinny and Gwenth went missing. "I went to the beds…you know, in the shelter and…my…babies were gone.." _

Quistis read quickly, her fingers moving beneath Seifer's to scroll the small rubber nub farther down as more of the page was revealed. She tried hard to concentrate on the screen, but the warmth of Seifer's hand was distracting.

Was the rest of his body this warm?

**Read the article, Quistis, stop thinking about his damned hand.**

_"As Mrs. Guarsen has had a record of previous drinking and problems with the both the law and her husband, who had on several occasions illegally regained custody of the children, no formal complaint has been filed. Mr. Guarsen was unavailable for comment_."

Five more similar sites and 246 missing children scattered across the globe later, Quistis frowned.

"A terrorist attack on the IGCS and 246 missing children- _I'm_ missing something, Seifer." She said plainly. "Like a connection."

Seifer crossed his arms and leaned back, and Quistis cursed herself for missing the warmth. "Most of the missing children _lately_ exhibited a pattern. All were orphaned or lost in the system to some degree. The local forces never made the connection, because half of these things haven't even been officially reported." He narrowed his eyes. "And they've all been committed in the last two months."

Quistis gazed over at him. "But what makes you think there's a connection? Military movements and missing children are two very different things. Besides, half of these children aren't considered missing, just a matter of custody battles, runaways, or lakes or other hazards that children unfortunately but often fall prey to."

Seifer gazed over at her, eyes serious. "I can't really say for sure. It's just…a feeling." His eyes were so level- so serious, that it didn't occur to her _not_ to believe him. Still, something still wasn't sitting right with her. A sense of _something…_an uneasy coil in the bit of her stomach that stung like premonition. If Seifer was right, then what could possibly lie in store for the future?

Seifer was still looking at the screen, thoughts following along a similar line.

Quistis shrugged, gazing at one of the printouts. "I suppose it isn't as if we have better things to do. When we get to Balamb, I guess we could go over to meet Mrs. Guarsen, see if she knows anything. If nothing else, it will count towards your community service hours."

"I guess," he replied, mirroring her shrug. He yawned, muscles pulled taut as he stretched. "What time is it?"

She checked her watch. "It's one in the morning," she said, looking surprised.

"I'm surprised Puberty Boy hasn't come to collect us for being out past curfew." Chuckled Seifer.

"I'm sure he's busy elsewhere," she said coolly, logging out and reaching back to snap off the monitor.

"You really should get over him, you know." He said quietly, in a tone unlike very unlike his usually snide voice when speaking of Squall.

Quistis just shook her head. "_Over_ him?" she asked, bemused. Seifer had no idea…

"Tch. You've been practically wetting your pants over him since we were kids."

"Excuse me?" she asked, her voice rising just slightly as she turned incredulously to face him. "I most certainly-"

"Shit, even when we grew up and went to this hellhole you still favored him. He was always your favorite."

Quistis frowned. Was that bitterness in his tone? "Squall and I? There never was any _Squall and I_. There was never any _Squall_ and there hasn't been any _I_, not for a long time. Do you understand?" she asked, anger creeping into her tone.

"Not really."

Quistis sighed, settling her chin in her hands. "Me neither." She heard Seifer chuckle lightly behind her. "We can meet tomorrow morning over breakfast to discuss exactly how we want to tackle this. Internet searches definitely aren't working."

"All right."

"I suppose we should sneak off to bed." She murmured standing and stretching, the material of her jacket riding high enough to give him a firm view of her stomach. He looked away, more out of agitation than respectfulness.

He grinned. "Well, if you're offering-"

Her face splashed crimson, adding to her embarrassment for a reason she couldn't explain. "You know what I meant, Almasy. Now get going."

The man in front of her laughed, pushing off of his knees as he got to his feet. "Still trying to boss me around, I see," he said, grinning.

She glanced sideways at him, awarding him an almost impish grin. "Well, I _am_ older than you, you know."

"By a whole two months," he snorted. "And don't think you let **me** forget it when we were kids."

She rolled her eyes. "Surely I could not have been _that_ bad."

"Bad?" he scoffed. "You were a tyrant!"

The door shut behind them, the loud bang echoing throughout the hallway.

"Hyne! Could you shut it any louder! I don't think they heard you in the _south wing!_"

He smirked. "See what I mean?"

"Ohh!" she gave him a mock glare, but her eyes were shining with a familiar friendly challenge he remembered from younger days. "Whatever I did to you as a child, I'm sure you deserved it!"

They disappeared down the hall, laughing softly, their shadows flickering against the walls like candlelight, unaware of the fate that followed them, a panting, dark dog just inches from their heels.

It had already begun.

…

…

…

She watched him rise from the sheets, his form quiet in the subtle darkness of dawn. The mattress creaked, and a wave of coolness invaded the soft linen sheets as his body poured from beneath the blue comforters.

It was no matter. The bed was always cold, anyway.

She stared at the outline of his back, silhouetted in the thin slices of sun that poured through the flowered curtains. She watched through cracked lids as he rose and dressed silently, tucking his shirt into his pants and adjusting the buckle of the plain brown belt, the silver catching the light in sharp, uneven points.

The fabric rustled softly. He was quiet so as to not wake her. She watched him between the cracks of her eyelids, hazy slits of light that allowed only the silhouette of his form through.

She watched him distantly, as she always had since that day, her love for him strange and chilled like a cold, unfamiliar hand. That same hand had guided her back, back into the cottage with its sunlit counters and simple woven rugs, back to her place at his side. Even the house was peculiar to her now. The rooms didn't seem to know her anymore, and truthfully, they were as strange to her as she seemed to be to them, the plaster like cold arms around her, hugging her too tightly.

She'd swept these floors once, contented, with children ducking and darting underfoot, their laughter spreading to every dark corner of the small stone cottage. She'd washed the windows and set flower boxes out onto the sill. Now, the absence of those voices haunted her, the ghost of their laughter a constant chill on her skin. The floors gathered dust and the windowsill lay barren to the sunlight, catching the light in chipped paint flakes.

She'd lain here with him once on this bed, welcomed his hands and his mouth and his skin gentle against her.

He did not touch her anymore.

She remembered him clearly in his younger days, the gentle shine of his eyes and the quiet, shy nature of his kindness, the quiet way he'd tiptoed around her, as if she'd been a delicate flower too fragile for him to touch.

He tiptoed around her now as well, but the avoidance was something different. At one time, she had been a mild and loving wife, his pretty little keepsake to keep polished and pure. Now she was tainted, and she knew he could see the shadows behind her eyes. But if he knew, he did not accuse. It was not his nature.

So unlike her other soldiers, he was. Had always been. Not like the ones that showed up at her step with roses and assured smiles, soldiers dressed in clean button-down vests with hungry, ambitious eyes polished like brass buttons- no, this one came with blue violets and brought her books, treating her as gently as fine china, as if she would break before him. Even when she had told him that there would be no children, that there could be no children, he still came, gentle as a hummingbird tapping at her window with that tender smile on his face.

And that was why she married him.

She had a soldier once, a brash and impetuous soul that had twisted free of her hands only to fly straight into the sun. She was young then, foolish, and when he promised her forever she believed it, gave herself to the moment and the heat and the flame in his eyes. But forever to a soldier was a minute to another man, and his promises of returning all fell short of her doorstop somehow as she'd known they would. In a strange way, she knew he would not return, known that even as she held him that she would soon have to let him go.

But that was the price of fire. It spread like a locust swarm across the heart, leaving no traces behind.

Her lover's uniform returned, brass buttons shining and the blood stains too deep to wash out. And the child, the tiny breath of the promise he'd left her, that died too, so twisted and mangled inside her that it had ruined her and her cherished future as a mother. It was her punishment, she knew, for loving so foolishly. She'd told no one about her soldier, or the child, simply sunk into the shadows and nearly dreamed herself to death. After a year, he was truly dead to her, left behind like crushed rose petals, the scattered memories of her impetuous and foolish youth. The child too, became a dream, a dream that would never return but in shadows of the ones that would call her 'Matron'.

But this man, this man that stood before her on the doorstep with the quiet smile on his face and the unsteady shake of his hand in her presence, this man was constancy embodied. This man would stay. He was no soldier, not the straight and heroic figure she had spent her girlish dreams on. No, not a soldier.

But he was a good man.

And she loved him, yes, loved him with a gentle warmth if not with raging fire, the kind of heat that stayed and was constant if not thrilling. But it was no matter. She had had thrilling once, and it nearly drowned her. And if some part of her had longed for that adventure, that passion, she had pinned it back, quiet and obedient as she gave to him all she was capable. All that he deserved for harboring such a tainted sparrow. She never told him of the soldier, for, to her, that life was already past, never again to return but in subtle ghosts that occasionally haunted her memory and the barren space of her belly. She would never leave him for a dream.

At least, that was what she thought then.

She had held fire once, and once should have been enough.

She kept the house and the kitchen as he liked it, and he was always kind, always loving and understanding and never harsh. He had never laid a finger on her but in gentleness and with her permission. She never refused him, and the way he touched her was never unpleasant, but if he knew that it was not always his name kept trapped behind her lips in the more passionate moments of their hours spent together, he never said a word. And she was sweet and willing, as soft and saccharine as the violets once tangled in his hands.

And in return, he had given her the children.

They had been so beautiful to her, as beautiful as she imagined her own children would have been. And her dear, sweet husband basked in her happiness, and loved the children as much as she. Her happiness was his, and the children's happiness belonged to them both.

She loved him most when she watched him with them after work hours, swinging the children up onto his shoulders and wading with the children in the waters, pants rolled up to his knees as he chased crayfish with the boys and taught them how to catch butterflies without damaging their wings. He read to the girls every night, the three of them curled up in the crook of his shoulder and heads rested against small swell of his belly. And she loved him and the children and she was happy, and the past seemed far away, almost like another life she had left behind.

And then **she** came.

Standing in the garden, skin pale and shivering, spine bent like a wilted flower. And yet, she could sense strength in this woman, enough strength to bend the world in half. A thousand whispers surrounded her, whispers of power and pain and glory and lust, her shaking hands begging release from her torment. Her first instinct had been for the children, for the wide- eyed innocents that such a woman could infect so easily. However, even now, she could not deny her attraction to it, to the magnetism of the woman's dark eyes as they pleaded with her to end her torment.

She had taken it, the power like lightening crackling through her veins at first, then nothing so quickly that later she would think that perhaps nothing had happened at all. But that was far from the truth.

The power was a quiet virus. And she had taken it in, not knowing the whispers would all invade her mind like locusts and the darkness in the woman's eyes would soon invade her own. It was a sickness, a bile that rose from her belly every morning, harder and darker until she could scarcely contain it.

She hid it from her husband, hid it between the sheets and the doors until he only dimly suspected the shadows in his bed.

But never guessed until it was too late.

She had always hidden things well from him. And they both knew it.

The darkness was content to lurk for a time. She watched with happy eyes as the children found homes, and cared for the ones left. They were her joy, her pride, and when she created Garden, she was overjoyed to see many of them there. She could watch them there, care for them from a distance, even if they didn't remember her as clearly as she did them.

But she was sick, and getting sicker. The images haunted her more frequently, images of knights and glory and villagers screaming for their lives on their knees and her own sick glory hot in her veins.

_Fire_.

The power was growing stronger, stronger, and she found herself wanting it again. She wanted to reach out her arms and smash the world beneath her fingertips, hear the screams and the chants echo her name throughout eternity. She wanted fire, wanted to cradle the flames in her arms and she wanted her knight, his mouth like hot embers against her skin, wanted to feel power in her veins as he and all others knelt before her, wanting her, revering her-

And the SeeDs, her children, were in her way.

And it had all happened so fast.she watched behind her body as it did such terrible things to those around her, watched as time and time again, the Hunger rose in her, the ghost of that woman laughing in her ears. And she could admit, in her darkest dreams, that perhaps sometimes it had been her own hands that had guided that destruction, and perhaps, behind the mask, she herself had smiled.

That time flitted by like a beat of fire in her pulse- screams and a pretty little knight on his knees in front of her, jade eyes shining with loyalty and lust. Her soldier, hers again if not wearing different skin. And how he worshipped her, worshipped the shadows and the skin that harbored them, stood in front of her with that sword bared, gleaming, turning his back on his past to follow her to the ends of the earth. He was beautiful, the young, lithe form of perfection, a puppet that danced at her command. So fiery, so strong and so wildly ambitious. It had been too long since she'd tasted fire.

They were both in love with the woman inside her, in love with her cunning and her power and the wicked glee with which she destroyed and created. She was their fire, their horror and their triumph, the whip that flogged them through failure and tended the greed and lust within their soul's soil like a fruitful garden.

And what horrors it bore.

And when 'she' was extinguished, she was left only with her son, battered and broken before her, the spark in his eyes long smothered, both of them haunted and knee-deep in the ashes of a witch's dream.

He did not touch her now, her husband, too afraid of the tainted shadows that still lurked on her skin.

Too afraid that he would be pushed away...or perhaps, afraid that she would _let him in.__  
_  
She could no longer read him, and she knew that he had never quite known how to read her. Perhaps…perhaps, she thought, some days, they had never really known each other at all, but read from some unspoken cues created in their own minds out of duty and obligation.

She knew he often thought of the golden-haired knight that championed her, wondered at the depth and breadth to which their union had gone. And for a fact, she was no longer sure herself. The shadows played strange games behind her eyelids. The ashes of the witch sometimes gleaned to life, dancing with a gentle fire in her dreams. But whatever remained of those dreams when she awoke was enough to drive her back.

He no longer touched her, and his protectiveness was distant. Oh, he was never unkind. It was not in him to be. But it was well within him to hurt, and she knew just how badly she wounded him every day that she kept her pain secret from him.  
   
She avoided his questions, denied him answers, and refused to talk about the time that had drawn up chasms between husband and wife. They were quiet now, strangers to one another and she knew it hurt him with every breath he took. Her guilt was ten fold, the sadness of his gaze stabbing at her heart every time she looked at him, a reminder of the dreams she had crushed in favor of greater ones.

'She' was gone now, and her presence had ebbed into a quiet ember that sat in the pit of her soul. Sometimes it tried to rise, a flame fighting against the cold and quiet night, but finding no fuel in her body's tired form, it eventually quieted, gone, a shadow of the former flare.

Still, knowing everything she knew, living with the sadness of a sick, ruined dream, she could not say for certain that was she to return to that garden on that day, that she could have refused the witch's offer.

And that, perhaps, was her greatest guilt of all.

She heard, dimly, the distant roar of a plane's large engine, low and solid like the purr of a giant cat. Ragnarok. She closed her eyes quickly as he turned, hands gentle on her form, soft and feather light as his soft hands came to rest on her shoulders. Slowly, reverently, but with just the faintest tinge of hesitation, he pressed his lips to the soft indentation of her temple.

It was the first time he had touched her in two long years. She was afraid to open her eyes, to raise her lashes and find it only a dream.

"Goodbye, darling." He whispered, fingers brushing back a lock of hair to tuck it behind her ear.

_So soft.._

Always too soft..

"I love you." He muttered. The door closed softly behind him, and only then did she allow the tears to slip from her cheeks. It was the first time he had spoken those words in two long years.

Two eternities.

She stood, walking quietly to the window and peeling back the curtain to watch his retreating form duck onto the plane's steps. She watched the plane rise up into the dawn, and she raised her hand against the glass, his name a whisper on her lips.

She turned, determined that when he returned, his wife and home would be as he'd left them so long ago. She wanted no more part of glory. She would sit on the wicker chairs that overlooked the ocean and by happy and contented to live out her days with the man beside her. She would scrub the shadows from her eyes until only she remained, as beautiful and as pure as she had once been to him.

She would greet him in the doorway as the once sweet creature that had greeted him long ago. He deserved that much.

She watched the plane disappear, and felt an odd feeling rise up in her, a dark prickle that felt suspiciously like the past as she watched her husband disappear over the horizon.

Her gentle soldier. He would come home to her. She closed her eyes.

_The men at the door, handing her the blue uniform with the brass buttons..._

The blood dried on the collar…

_  
... the stains would not leave…and she stood at the sink, hands white against the blood-soaked cloth-_

She pressed her hand harder into the glass as the last of the plane was swallowed in the crimson shades of dawn, the chill of the windowpane echoing throughout her entire body. A promise, as cold as the dew frost against her palm, one that lurked like a shaded silhouette behind her. She had felt it for awhile now...in the shadows that the witch had left. She could feel it on the wind, taste it on the frost of the flowers, feel it in the echo of her soul.

_A cold spell was coming._

…

…

…

"Altitude 3000 feet and climbing."

Xu gazed out the window of the plane after saying her hellos to Cid, who looked even more tired than usual. The Headmaster had made a special trip home after hearing the news of the IGCS mission failure to spend some time with his wife.

It did not escape Xu's notice that Cid usually returned form his trips home looking even more tired than when he left.

Xu sighed. She had no doubts that things were about to be complicated even further for all of them.

Although she regretted the ramifications that the mission had for Cid, Squall, and the rest of B. Garden, she would not have changed her decisions. They were the right ones for the time and situation. Xu was a practical person- she harbored no more emotion that was necessary for any given situation. Xu had prepared her testimony the night previous, and felt confident in its solidarity. She would save her nervousness for later, when it would actually serve a purpose.

She adjusted her seatbelt, closing her eyes as she leaned back and hoped for a quick flight. She was not particularly looking forward to reaching her destination; however, that did not mean she was particularly fond of the air. Flying in itself seemed such an uncontrolled activity- a 3 ton plane at the mercy of the gusts and gales of the stratosphere, far from the solid earth below. Xu preferred control.

She could hear Rinoa's soft, sweet little voice behind her- the sorceress had insisted on accompanying Squall to the conference despite his protests. Usually, Xu liked to see as little of the 'princess' as possible, but for once, she actually didn't mind sharing a plane with Timber's 'angel'. She'd keep Squall distracted, and Squall distracted meant he wouldn't have time to lecture Xu on following mission protocol. Cid sat in front of her, behind Nida, who was flying Ragnarok for the first time in favor of leaving Selphie at B.Garden's controls. After Ragnarok had been 'borrowed' during the Sorceress War, B. Garden had built a hangar built especially for the large plane, making Ragnarok flight-capable while B.Garden was still in the air.

She watched the back of Nida's head, smiling. He'd put in enough harrowing hours observing Selphie at Ragnarok's controls, and she could tell beneath his stoic exterior he was excited as a little boy with a paper airplane on a windy day, although he'd never admit it. She chuckled. Nida was a good man- she didn't have any regrets regarding their time spent together, although she suspected it was more pleasure than business for him, unlike herself.

Now, if only Quistis could find someone to distract herself. Xu curled her hand under her chin and closed her eyes as her thoughts wandered to her friend, as they often did as of late. Quistis had become like a younger sister to her, one Xu had become intent on protecting throughout the years. She remembered Quistis upon her admission: ten, a painfully shy and serious child that spent every available in the library, tucked into a corner with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on her nose, her haircut as glaringly uneven as her temperament. She'd carried herself strangely, head down and back hunched, almost as if she was trying to become invisible to everyone around her.

She was quickly the best in her classes, both in academics and in spell casting, and all of her Instructors almost instantly labeled her as SeeD material. Quistis, however, remained as painfully quiet as ever. Xu could relate to being new and lonely, and she had eventually approached the younger girl. The girl had responded instantly to kindness, her face brightening at a simple 'hello.' The two had been instant friends, and Xu had watched her best friend emerge from her shell as they got through classes together, shared crushes and aspirations.

Quistis' confidence improved with every success, and she soon became Garden's youngest SeeD, and a capable one at that. Still, Xu didn't think Quistis' confidence ever quite caught up with her achievements.

Although Xu knew that Quistis could play confidence well, could mold herself to success and wear it like a second skin, she knew that deeper, lurked the same shy girl that was still trying to be invisible and liked at the same time. She had often wondered what had happened to Quistis before her life at Garden, but it had never seemed an appropriate time to ask, and upon her entrance she had been so infused with GF summons that Xu doubted Quistis remembered her life before Garden at all. But perhaps that was best.

No normal ten-year-old child carried themselves that way. But then, they all carried their shadows.

Quistis was one of the remaining romantics, complete with notions of white knights and fairy tale castles. Xu herself was a pragmatist, and considered a second body in bed good for scratching an itch or a political debate.  She had no notions of knights and castles- she wanted to build her own, herself, and she didn't want to share.

She'd noticed a change in Quistis lately, and although the change was surprising, it wasn't entirely new. And, although reluctantly, Xu could admit that it likely had something to do a certain Seifer Almasy.

Seifer had gotten to Quistis during her time as his Instructor, and not just in terms of irritation. Quistis had always believed that Squall and Seifer would be Garden's greatest SeeDs, and although she only turned out to be half-right, Xu doubted that Quistis had ever given up on the ex- knight. She'd noticed the way Quistis flared to life when challenged by or challenging the brash young man, and it was a welcome change even if Xu did want to take out a new bounty on Seifer's head every other week.

Xu loved her friend, but Quistis was far too uptight for her own good. Around friends, Quistis was warm and compassionate, always looking out for them and helping them at every opportunity. It was what would have made her a good Instructor. However, Quistis pushed others away at every chance as well, almost as if the world was too dangerous to let in all at once.  Xu longed to see her friend whole, open to the world around her. Quistis deserved that kind of happiness.

As much as it had hurt Xu to see her friend pine aimlessly after Squall, she knew that realistically, the two would never have worked. Squall needed constant assurance of who and what he was, and Quistis' own insecurities were just as prominent. The two would have needed constantly from one another, and their relationship quickly would have become a misunderstood void. They were too different-Quistis needed the presence of open emotion as reassurance, and Squall needed that privacy to feel safe.

Almost unwillingly, Xu's thoughts ran back to Seifer. She'd seen the way he watched Quistis as her student- cautiously. Quistis was a beautiful woman, although Xu was fairly certain that her friend remained more or less unaware of what to do with her looks. Many others did, however. Seifer, unlike the others, did not worship Quistis, and never had. He was aware of her humanity, and made her painfully aware of it as well. At the time, Xu had hated Seifer for it, but now.. Quistis had risen to his challenges with every word, defended her beliefs and convictions under his sardonic observation. Her anger at Seifer justified her confidence in herself, and the confidence had stuck, slowly but surely giving way to a woman that now stood straighter.

She'd watched the two since the ex-knight's return with a mix of curiosity and concern for her friend, and the circumstances did little to please her. She could see what they were becoming, even if Quistis couldn't.  
   
Xu didn't think she would ever forget the image of her friend draping her body over Seifer's, skin pale and hands shaking at his shoulder as Curaga's faded light echoed through both their skins like ghosts of lightening.

_Blood oozed from beneath Quistis' fingers, and despite her training as a medic, her eyes had been filled with panic. Seifer had fairly spun with the hit, and Xu was sure as he'd smashed into the ground hard enough to cause a concussion. The ex-knight didn't look to be getting up soon, if at all._

"You have to leave him, Quistis."

"No!" Vehement denial where they should have been reserved acceptance. Leave the fallen. Save the mission. This iron ran hot in Xu's blood, true to training, but it seemed to have frozen in Quistis'.

"Quistis, you can't-"

"One minute!"

"You don't honestly think you can make it down those stairs-"

Her eyes flashed, cold light by misplaced resolve. "You want to leave? Then leave."

"Quistis!"

"Give me **one minute**_!"_

Xu's chest had stung, knowing that at the end of one minute that she most likely would have to leave her friend and a dead man behind, knowing that it was for Quistis and Quistis alone that she even considered waiting those precious sixty seconds, risking all their lives.

One life should never determine a mission.

_"Fine.__ One minute."_

She'd refused to leave him, even though every ounce of her training as a soldier should have taught her to leave the fallen behind to preserve the rest of the team and the mission. Xu loved Quistis as a sister, but she could and would have left her if the situation demanded. Garden's conditioning was flawless. Quistis, like Xu, was a human being tirelessly molded and conditions to think and operate as a soldier, both inspired and diminished; a being that transcended the limits of flesh in spirit, heightened the senses, and diminished in the sense of emotion. Still, ten years of molding, and in a single moment, crouched on top of her fallen comrade, his blood seeping through her hands, she had lost all of it.

_And for what?_

Seifer Almasy was a beautiful but careless creature, as mule-headed and as brash as they came. Not stupid, but stubborn and blind with pride. She'd seen him make his rounds at Garden, saw him more than once on the girl's wing sneaking out long past curfew. But that was the privilege of beautiful, careless men- to break hearts and hymens like ants smashed in the wake of careless, hollow whispers and seconds of sweat. It was the beginning of her dislike for Almasy, a vague put very palpable mistrust that only grew with time.

She could no longer say for sure that Seifer's values focused solely on himself- in fact, the ex-knight seemed to be consumed with a self-loathing that she had never seen equaled before. However, that did not change what he was in the past and capable of being in the future. He would hurt her, and Quistis would do nothing but be hurt, retreating even farther into her self-isolating island than before.

Xu would not interfere with Quistis' life- the young SeeD had never interfered in hers and she was inclined to extend her friend the same confidence and courtesy. And so, Xu was left with nothing more to do than watch; something that, for a person that so desired control, drove her crazy.  
   
Xu balanced her chin on her hand and prepared herself for a light sleep in the six-hour flight that would follow, even at top speed. The scenery was hazy below, the breaks of clouds revealing a sun-dappled ocean. Despite her resolve not to worry, dread still sat in the pit of her stomach, making its presence known in every rumble of the craft that followed.

If one of the Gardens was behind such an act, it would not only start a large-scale war, it would most likely catch the lives that existed within several neutral towns with it. All Gardens, even Trabia, were equipped with high-tech ballistic missiles, not to mention supplementary firepower that could level a small town. A terrorist organization with such capability would produce no better results. At any rate, if an organization could plan and execute the infiltration and destruction of a high-security, highly- classified building, and have manpower enough to nearly take down a group of some of the highest-ranking SeeD's that Garden had to offer..

Xu closed her eyes.

_Hyne__ help them all._


	22. Shadows of Fate

Disclaimer: All I own in this chapter is the damned politicians. You can have 'em. Although I'm starting to grow fond of Cerebrus.

_  
Laid out on my back,_

_I can't sleep 'cause I'm slumming_

_Eyes in my teeth,_

_I can't see 'cause I'm eating_

_Head full of noise,_

_I can't think 'cause it's crushing_

_Back on my feet,_

_like a freight train I'm coming_

_-'Can You Trip Like I Do', The Crystal Method  
_

Chapter 19

_He kissed her slowly, the way a woman should be kissed- hard and complete and without reservation. His muscles bunched and flexed beneath the tight cotton t-shirt he wore as he drew her into the perfect, strong circle in his arms, whispering everything she had ever wanted to hear in sweet, deep breaths. She whispered his name, and felt her knees give way as throatily, he murmured hers, proclaiming his undying love with every caress, his throbbing member pressed against-_

Disgusted, Quistis threw the book across the room.

Sighing, she collapsed against her pillow and stared at the paperback now lying defeated on the floor, the glossy cover sporting a painted picture of a man and a woman holding guns with half their clothes torn off, the spine cracked from all the disgusted hurls and continued reading attempts on her part.

She didn't care what Selphie and Rinoa said. "The Trabian Spy I Loved" was simply _not_ classic reading. The weapons descriptions weren't even correct, the action scenes were poorly drawn, and Quistis was sick of reading about midnight-haired virgins that had fifty orgasms in one night with Rico the Trabian Stallion.

She glared at the book as if it were a Cactuar about to toss ten thousand needles her way. She was going to have to finish it. Selphie and Rinoa were going to quiz her on it at the end of the month. It was all part of Rinoa's 'Self-Improvement' idea, wherein the three girls drew suggestions for one another out of a hat for a monthly activity that would, supposedly, improve them as intelligent, independent women. Or as Selphie liked to say, 'hot babes.' This month, Selphie had to allow Siria (a second year junior classman) to organize all Garden events, Rinoa was taking some 'holistic self-defense class' that involved natural teas and kickboxing, and Quistis had to read a stupid romance novel.

Was everyone trying to inject romance into her life? For the love of Hyne.

She hopped out of bed and stepped over the book on the way to the shower. Maybe in her absence and in the corner it would learn to be a good book with decent plot development and accurate ballistics.

She showered quickly, wanting to save enough time before bed to plot over the day's mission plan for tomorrow. On some secret, nerdy level, she enjoyed the action; it was as close as she could get to a lesson plan.

She dropped her towel reaching for her brush, and turned around to catch a glimpse of herself in the full-length vanity that she'd propped up in the corner but rarely used.

She looked in the mirror, smoothing her hands over her stomach as her wet hair clung to her cheeks. She narrowed her eyes, looking critically at her reflection.

Breasts, stomach, thighs- her own skin was antiseptic to her, beauty a foreign label that belonged to other women. She was not completely unaware of herself, no. She knew her height was slightly above average, and that her weight was acceptable for her age and body structure. Legs long, breasts slightly above average, feet size six and a half. She cocked her head, studying the image as if it belonged to a stranger. Pretty, maybe, to someone, someday.

The steam rose, thick in her nostrils-

_The steam was hot against her cheeks, fingers curled over the edge of the stove. The woman behind her, noodles boiling on a hot stove, the smell of steam and pasta grain fresh in her nose and condensing in small droplets on her lips. Too close to the stove. Too hot._

"You don't believe me. You need to see it. Feel it. Touch fire."

"But you just **told** me-"

"Give me your hand."

"No, I-"

"GIVE ME YOUR HAND."

Her hand being snatched, pressed, and the burner looming up, the head prickling against her palm as the burner rose up to meet tender flesh-  
  
Quistis opened her eyes with a start, body recoiling from the mirror as if it were a hot coal. Shiva's name was on her lips, the word itself trembling. She took a deep breath, retrieving her open palm from the mirror without having a clear memory of putting it there in the first place.

Something stirred in her skin, gooseflesh rising up to her neck in a chilling wave.

_Calm down, Trepe. You're losing it. Too little sleep.  
_  
Quickly, she knelt down to pick up her towel, tugging her brush through her hair. You don't have time to think, Quistis. You need to call the train station, reserve a rental-

She spent the next two hours staring at her ceiling, trying to will herself asleep…a phantom pain burning in her palm and in her head.

…

…

…

"Seifer?"

"Nnngh."

"Seifer, it's time to get up. We have to take the rental to the train station…we're going to Balamb, remember?"

"…whatever…"

"I'll meet you in the cafeteria in an hour. And Seifer? Dress civ."

Quistis hung up the phone, an amused and only slightly irritated smirk on her face. Seifer Almasy was obviously not a morning person, although in reality, she couldn't claim that she was any better. Unfortunately, she had been up since three with nothing better to do than to secure a rental unit and to calculate time estimates to their destination. She stopped herself from doing a fourth one, since she was pretty sure that it would qualify her for the super anal nerd-dom award that Selphie kept threatening to present her with.

She walked into the bathroom, turning on the lights and looking in the mirror once more. As per her suggestion to Seifer to dress in civilian clothing, she'd pulled on a white turtleneck sweater with beautiful braided knitwork that she'd picked up at one of the small shops at the fisherman's horizon on a shopping trip with Selphie, Xu, Arya and Rinoa. Actually, she remembered getting kidnapped, if memory served, and the Ragnarok itself was sabotaged for what Selphie declared a 'necessary girl day.' It had been fun, although Squall had been less than pleased when they arrived back. Luckily, Rinoa had been along for collateral, and had easily diffused the situation.

She'd never had a reason to wear the sweater before today. It was thick and soft and flared out in the arms- perfect for a cold winter day. A pair of faded jeans and brown suede boots completed the look. She pulled her hair back into a loose French braid and pinned a section of her bangs at an incline. Despite her somewhat unwanted fame from the Sorceress War, she doubted she'd be recognized. She stared at her reflection, the girl that stared back at her almost a stranger. Twenty-one. Sometimes she forgot how very young she was. Most days she felt thirty, or forty.

But no…twenty-one. Barely been kissed. Barely been _anything_. And yet, she'd seen more war and more of the world than most people could ever hope to see in a lifetime. It was an odd trade-off, her childhood, for the world. She'd trade it again.

This was, unquestionably, the first time she had ever dressed casually without mission requirement or brute force on the part of Selphie and Rinoa since her admission to Garden. After a little consideration, she added a pair of silver earrings and moistened her hands with her favorite raspberry lotion. She swiped on some mascara and started to apply some tinted gloss to her lips, but stopped mid-swipe. Why was she going through all this trouble? Certainly not for _Seifer_.

_Was she?_

She frowned at her image, started to wipe off the gloss, but stopped. She wasn't trying to look nice for anyone…just…_pedestrian_. That was it. She reapplied the gloss, slung a purse across her shoulder, and nodded at her reflection before heading to the cafeteria.

She found the cafeteria once again relatively empty, filled with only a few milling cadets and a couple of disgruntled cafeteria ladies that seemed constantly present. Zell was convinced that Marta, a heavy-set woman with obviously bottle-born red hair and a large, hairy mole, was at the heart of the hot dog conspiracy.

Quistis had her doubts.

She noticed Irvine and Selphie off in the corner, Selphie perched on Irvine's lap as was her usual position. They sometimes called Irvine the Selphie-ventriloquist, but the young cowboy replied that he frankly refused to take credit for whatever came out of her mouth.

Quistis waved at the happy couple. It was difficult not to notice them, since Selphie was waving and shouting her name.

"Hey Quisty! Come over here and sit by us!"

Quistis smiled and headed over towards her friends, grabbing a cup of coffee and a few melon slices as she did so.

"You know, there are about seven other chairs at the table," she remarked, bemused as she slid into a chair opposite her friends.

Selphie stuck out her tongue at her. "None as comfy as my Irvy!" she exclaimed.

Irvine just grimaced. "Y'know, Selphie, you got a really boney butt. And you're sitting right on-"

"Oh hush, Irvy!" chirped Selphie. "You certainly look nice today, Quisty! Got a hot date?" She attempted a wink, one that turned out almost as bad as Rinoa's.

"Well, Seifer and I are going to Balamb to-" Quistis realized the mistake in her choice of words as soon as they were out of her mouth. She resisted the urge to sew her mouth shut.

"Ooooh! A date!" squealed Selphie, clapping her hands together. Quistis could see it now, 'Seifer and Quistis' banners all over Garden…a surprise engagement shower...

She felt her face flush and quickly shook her head. "No! That's not it! We're just going into Balamb to-"

"Ah, yes, Balamb. Excellent hotel country." Chuckled Irvine, winking at her. Quistis glared at him. Selphie didn't need any encouragement.

"We're **not** on a date. Seifer and I are going to Balamb to question a woman about the disappearance of her children. There's been a lot of disappearances lately, and after the child discovered in the morgue with heavy mag-poisoning-"

At that, Selphie frowned. "Did Cid put you on that assignment?"

"Well, not exactly. We sort of…put ourselves on our own assignment. I figured that it could count towards his community service hours."

Irvine quirked an eyebrow. "Why missing children? Isn't that an affair for local law enforcement, unless it deals with a political motivation?"

Quistis took a sip of her coffee. "Yes, but Seifer, ehrm, we, uh, I believe that the kidnappings might tie into the IGCS failure, since they both began around the same time. They could be training them, or using hostages-"

When she said it out loud, it made even less sense.

"Interesting." Said Irvine. "But most terrorist factions don't have any interest in children. Not any that Garden's dealt with, anyway."

"Maybe they're starting an evil daycare." Selphie leaned forward, her hands cupping her chin. Irvine tried to reach his hands around her to butter an English muffin on the table in front of him.

"Don't you have your class today, Selphie?" asked Quistis, rolling her eyes at her friend's 'theory'.

"Nope! We're on assignment too, orders of Squall and Cid. We're supposed to go to Biotech headquarters in Balamb and investigate recent orders for Sensbot and other similar prototypes, see if we can match up an order with the IGCS occurrence. Arya's coming along, too." Frustrated, Irvine gave up on trying to eat around his girlfriend, slammed the butter knife back on the table, and sat back with a huff.

Quistis smiled at Irvine's predicament and took a bite of melon. "Seifer and I are going to take a car in about half an hour. Would you like to ride along?"

"No good, Quis. Arya doesn't get off work in the shipping department for another hour, and then we've got to go over our mission guidelines."

Arya must have pulled an all-nighter, then. "Hyne, that girl is tireless."

"She juggles Zell," commented Irvine. "She's gotta have energy."

"True."

Selphie squinted at Quistis, who was starting to feel unnervingly like she was on display. "Isn't that the sweater you got when we went to FH?"

"You mean the day you girls stole Ragnarok for a shopping trip?" remaked Irvine, leaning back in his chair. "I thought Squall was going to give himself a hernia."

"We didn't 'steal' it. We borrowed it. 'Sides, **you** guys use it all the time." Said Selphie smugly, crossing her arms.

Irvine frowned. "Yeah, for actual _missions_!"

"Ours was a mission of _fashion_, Irvy." Said Selphie reasonably, patting him.

Quistis laughed, but her expression turned serious as a thoughtful expression entered her eyes. "Would you guys mind doing me a favor while you're down there?"

Irvine nodded. "Shoot."

"I want you to check out any possible new prototypes for the slug model AX318."

"Okay, but why?" Irvine was curious.

"That's the slug Seifer was hit with. The actual bullet itself is at the D.S. Research Center for analysis, but I think it was a new model type, and I'd like it confirmed. Biotech does a number of experimental bio-cross prototypes- if it was made anywhere, I think it would be made there."

Irvine nodded. "Will do."

Selphie was still examining her, eyes catching on the silver points that dangled from her friend's normally barren lobes. "Earrings, too? Quisty, you don't **wear** earrings!" Her friend's face lit up in a grin. "This sounds a little more like a date than an interrogation every time I look at you!"

Quistis sighed, slumping her head into her open hands. "Selphie, will you ever get tired of making up my imaginary love life?"

"Nope!" exclaimed her friend, jumping a little in Irvine's lap. Quistis didn't miss his wince. For once, she decided to take sympathy on her friend, however undeserved it was.

"Hey Selphie, I think they just put out the muffins out."

"Really? Oooh! They'd better have banana!" The short brunette was gone in a flash.

Irvine sighed and stretched. "Thanks Quis. My leg was getting a cramp."

"Which one?" asked Quistis wickedly, winking through another bite of melon.

Irvine looked surprised, but quickly recovered and gave her a wink of his own, the 'Kinneas eye-catcher', as Quistis called it. "Wouldn't you like t' know, darlin'. It'd be a pretty big cramp."

"I'll take Selphie's word for it." She replied, rolling her eyes, startling more laughter from the cowboy.

Irvine turned his head suddenly at the new figure that strolled into the cafeteria. "Hey, there's your man now! Over here, Almasy!"

She saw Seifer shoot Irvine a funny look, but acknowledge the shout with a jerk of his head. Quistis started. She almost didn't recognize him, at least from the neck down. He wore a plain black turtleneck sweater paired with a pair of the black pants standard with every Garden uniform. He grabbed a glass of orange juice from the line and a plate of toast, walking over to their table and dodging the other cadets with a sour look on his face. Evidently still not a morning person.

"He's not my _man_," hissed Quistis, never taking her eyes off of the approaching figure.

The cowboy put gloved hands up in defense. "Hey, I just go with Selphie."

"That's what _all_ the lemmings say before they jump off the cliff," muttered Quistis bitterly.

Selphie plopped back onto the table, thankfully in her own chair this time. "Hey Seifer!" she echoed, waving and earning a similar look to the one her boyfriend received from the ex-knight. "Over here!"

Quistis glared hard at her friend. "Now don't you dare say anything stupid, Selphie Tilmitt."

"Say _what_, Quisty?" echoed her friend with a sweet tone that Quistis didn't believe for a minute.

Seifer sat down at the table, a frown still marring his features. It never failed to amaze Quistis how accepting Irvine and Selphie seemed of Seifer, Selphie especially. During the Sorceress war, she above all others had a reason to want Seifer Almasy dead. Quistis supposed that Selphie, though, above all others, had no particular desire to carry anger all her life. She knew that Selphie was far from shallow- beneath her happy and chirpy attitude lurked a very feeling and sympathetic individual. She also knew that Selphie had matured somewhat in past years (even if her meddling had not improved). As orphans and as soldiers, they had all found some way to survive. Selphie's was simply letting go.

Quistis was feverently hoping that the muffin kept her mouth glued shut for the next fifteen minutes, although she doubted Hyne was that kind.

"How's it goin', Seifer?" drawled Irvine casually, a guarded look overtaking the young man's normally open gaze as he glanced his way.

Perhaps _everything_ hadn't changed.

Seifer shrugged. "Okay." He said coolly, regarding Irvine with the same semi-suspicious stare over a bite of toast. It was something that Quistis noticed about men- they released grudges, albeit slowly. She hoped so, at least.

Selphie swallowed her bite of muffin and opened her mouth. _Damnit_, thought Quistis.

Seifer shifted somewhat uneasily in his seat. Irvine was regarding him with an intense, if not hostile stare, and Selphie's eyes were practically boring a hole in his head. Quistis, he noticed, was watching Selphie with no small amount of interest, staring at her mouth, mainly as if she were going to pounce on the petite brunette at any second.

"Seifer, how did you sleep last night?" asked Selphie, unwrapping another muffin. Quistis was still staring at her, muttering something under her breath. "Alon-" Quistis glowered at her. "Altogether well, I hope?"

"Uh, yeah, okay." He gave the messenger girl a strange look, his frown deepening as he set down the piece of toast. The damned thing was black.

Were breakfasts always this weird with this group? They were beginning to make the **posse** look sane.

Selphie beamed. "So, Seifer, are you looking forward to your da-"

Quistis lunged across the table and clapped a hand over Selphie's mouth, securing her friend's head with the other as she dragged the brunette from the table. Seifer frowned, but Irvine didn't even look up from his plate, as if this were a daily occurrence he had become used to.

Even though the girls were a sizable distance away by the time Quistis released a still muttering Selphie, Quistis' shouts could still be heard.

"Selphie! You drooled all over me!"

"Well, you put your hand over my mouth!"

"Because you were about to spout it off!"

"I just calls 'em like I sees 'em!"

Just when he was sure Quistis was about to tackle Selphie and make things interesting, the com crackled on.

"Quistis Trepe, please report to shipping bay D." The intercom chose that moment to interfere, blaring through the cafeteria. A loud, metallic squawk followed, causing everyone in the cafeteria to jump. The sound of another man shouting in the background over the intercom could be heard and the sounds of a scuffle as the intercom squeaked again.

"I repeat, Quistis Trepe, please report to shipping **immediately**."

Quistis sighed in exasperation, throwing up her arms at Selphie and walking out of the cafeteria, mouthing something that looked like, 'What now?'

Seifer got up, putting down the toast he'd never gotten the chance to eat and dusting off his pants, scowling at the exit of the cafeteria.

"Women." grinned Irvine, thumbing at the spectacle behind him. "Always a mystery, eh?"

"Fucking rubix cubes," muttered Seifer, rolling his eyes as he stalked after Quistis.

Irvine just smiled and took a bite of his English muffin. Seifer had no idea.

…

…

…

Quistis peered into the shipping bay. It was a large, dank room with its oval ceilings and echoing walls, and its floors were filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes.

She'd let herself in with her id card. Usually, only Instructors were allowed access to the upper level portions of the shipping bay, but when they'd 'relieved' Quistis of her position, someone in the department had forgotten to take the status off of her card, which, coincidentally, suited Quistis just fine.

Explosives, low-level junctions, and weapons shipments were in Dock A, food shipments in Dock B, SeeD clothing, toiletries, and classroom supplies in Dock C, and Miscellaneous in Dock D. Absently, she wondered why she would have been called to shipping at…she peeled up her sweater to regard her watch. "Six forty-five a.m," she muttered.

"What do you need in shipping, anyway?" a deep voice behind her nearly sent her out of her skin.

She whirled. "Will you stop sneaking up on me?"

He just shrugged, looking around the docking bay. "What can I say? Everyone needs a hobby."

A harried-looking man ran up to them, breathing heavily and cutting off Quistis' reply. Sweat stained his forehead and uniform, and he appeared to hold an injured wrist. "Miss Trepe! Thank Hyne you're here! That beast is out of control!"

"Beast?" asked Quistis quizzically.

"Yes, the beast! The thing tried to eat Henry! C'mon, it's this way!" Quistis looked over at Seifer, who shrugged, and the two ran after the young man, whose name tag read 'Marlin' and who bobbed and weaved through the maze of boxes as if his life depended on it.

Quistis fingered an empty belt as she ran, cursing herself for not having Save the Queen with her. Granted, she had upper-level Ice and Bolt spells and a limited array of Forbidden magic constantly junctioned, but the whip would have been equally assuring. She heard Seifer's footsteps behind her, a strangely comforting sound.

Not that she **needed** comfort, thank you.

Marlin came to a dead stop after rounding one particularly tall group of boxes, and the Quistis and Seifer came to a skidding stop to come face to face with-

The 'beast.'

Quistis would have laughed, if the men around her hadn't looked so horrified…and the thing itself hadn't looked so terrible.

The dog, fur matted with blood and its eyes glazed with a furious sheen, lost no time in lunging forward at another, shorter man, the rows of large, almost thumb-sized teeth snapping just short of the man's face. The man, who'd been holding a clipboard as a sort of timid defense shield, instantly dropped it and skittered back, yelling.

The rest of the loading and shipment crew was perched up on a mountain of boxes, watching the happenings with horrified expressions as their comrades below attempted to 'tame the beast'. Seifer snorted. They looked like a bunch of shrieking housewives on stools.

Albeit, the snarling mass of muscle in front of them was hardly a hapless mouse.

Four legs, tail-

"Holy shit! Is that a _dog_?" asked Seifer, astonished.

"No! It's a fucking _kitten_!" shouted the shorter man, now holding up a crate up to his chest in defense. The monster lunged, teeth sinking into the wood and wrenching it from the man's hands, quickly turning the crate into a mass splinters with a few vigorous shakes.

The 'dog' was dark in color, an almost light black underneath all the dirt and blood that dotted its coat. Ears, currently flattened in rage against its skull, were triangular-shaped points each about the size of Seifer's hand. The scruff on its neck stood straight up, its hackles raised as well. He squinted, but couldn't place a breed on it. The damned thing looked half T- Rexaur, judging by the teeth. Seifer hung back, folding his arms as he watched the scene before him.

As long as the dog wasn't after _him_, it was fucking hilarious.

The other man grabbed a crow bar and waved it at the dog, trying to steer it back. The crow bar, however, bore a remarkable resemblance to a tire iron that had allegedly killed its master, and Quistis instantly realized the danger.

"No! Put it down!" she ordered.

Too late.

Marlin's eyes flickered over to her position. "Put it down! Are you fucking _insane_?" he shouted, raising the crowbar in a threatening gesture at the beast in an attempt to drive it back.

Big mistake.

It only seemed to further infuriate the dog, who snarled and lunged forward, teeth sinking into the man's arm as Marlin tried to deal the dog's skull an unsuccessful blow. The crow bar was instantly dropped, and the man hollered, desperately trying to wrench his arm from the walking bear trap in front of him.

Seifer watched with horror as Quistis lowered her hands and walked forward, her walk assured, confident, the look on her face one of clear exasperation with the men around her.

"Stop it!" she shouted. The dog looked up to see where the new noise had come from, temporarily releasing his victim at the sound of the authoritative shout.

The animal's eyes focused on Quistis' approaching form, and he turned, lowering his head and growling anew, lips trembling over gleaming fangs. Seifer gaped. What the hell was she doing? The thing was going to tear her apart!

Seifer started forward, reaching for an absent Hyperion, but Quistis' next action stopped him dead.

Unfazed, Quistis reached out and slapped the dog on the muzzle. "Bad dog!" she exclaimed. Seifer stood still, waiting for the dog to rip off her arm and gnaw it like a chew toy.

Instead, the dog whined, tail tucking between his legs as his pointed ears drew back, this time in submission.

Seifer gaped. The thing's head came up to Quistis' stomach, and in terms of mass and sheer muscular bulk the dog rivaled a Snow Lion, and it was cowering before Quistis Trepe?

.._Why wasn't he surprised?  
_  
The dog's black nose was now twitching in the air, sniffing curiously at the blonde woman in front of him. Quistis knelt down, holding out her hands as the dog lowered his massive head to sniff at them and in doing so assuming a non-threatening posture. His tail straightened, suddenly, and without warning, the dog lunged at her, knocking her on her back.

Seifer's stomach dropped into his toes as her shriek reached his ears. The thing was going to chew her head off-

Until he realized she was laughing. The damned thing was licking her face, nearly covering an entire cheek with one enthusiastic swipe of its pink tongue.

"Enough!" she ordered, pushing the dog off of her to sit up and wipe at her cheek, but she was still chuckling. Daintily, she petted the thing around the ears, massaging the beast until the dog let out a pleasured groan. The tail, once stiff with rage, was now happily dancing in a loose wag. "Hmmm, so you _do_ remember me." She mused, smiling at the tail's happy cadence.

The men on top of the boxes stared down at the scene before them with slack jaws.

Seifer was still trying to pick his stomach up out of his shoes.

The man whose arm had been attacked sat up, his shirt now a mangled blue ribbon. "Are you _crazy_?" he managed to stutter. "That thing is _dangerous_!"

Quistis cast a baleful look at him, still lolling the beast's massive head in her hands. The dog's weight was boneless now, its pink tongue hanging out of its mouth. "Only when you're threatening him, he is. His master was killed by a tire iron, and you wave a crow bar in his face?" Her look grew angrier. "Look at him! He's covered in gashes and there's blood all over him! What did you do to him?"

Marlin put his hands up in defense. "Look lady, I don't know nothin'. All's I know is that this mornin' some people dropped this damn thing off here soon as we touched ground at B. Base. Said it was _your_ problem now, and told us to remind you that you asked for it. Said they weren't responsible for missing arms or legs."

"Well, personally, I don't know why you men opened the crate in the first place." she stated, crossing her arms. "The shipment must have arrived by my orders, and you had no right to open it, regardless of its contents."

Marlin crossed his arms, chuckling bitterly. "Lady, we didn't open **nothin****'**. Big n' ugly here let **himself** out." The man looked down at his sleeve. "That..._thing_ should be put down. Damn thing almost took my arm off."

"Don't be a _baby_. He barely broke the skin."

The man looked at her with dubious outrage. "I'm bleeding! I'll have that thing reported!"

"Report this poor animal," returned Quistis. "And I'll report _you_ for animal cruelty. It's not going to look good on your job report that you can't handle one little shipment, is it?"

From their perches on the shipment crates, the man's coworkers barely contained smirks. Seifer noticed that although the beast had been contained, the men were in no hurry to get down. Apparently Trepe inspired a little fear of her own.

"You're crazy." Muttered Marlin. "Nuts."

Quistis got to her feet, and shrugged. "I'll sign for him."

The other man rolled his eyes and picked a clipboard off the ground, walking to hand it to her. The animal growled once more, hackles rising as it stood protectively in front of Quistis, stopping the man in his tracks.

Quistis started to walk forward to take the outstretched clipboard, but the dog simply followed her, growl intensifying with proximity. The man looked ready to shit himself.

"Perhaps it would be best to slide it over," surmised Quistis. The man swore but complied, and caught it as she slid it back. The dog watched the entire exchanged warily, as if it didn't quite trust the clipboard's intentions.

"Did anything else come in the crate?" she asked.

"Nope, just Cerberus here." replied the man, still eyeing the dog as if it would grow two more heads and drag him into the pits of Hell.

"Hm. I was hoping they'd sent the records. Those must have arrived separately. Well, thank you for your time then, gentlemen," she said, turning to leave. The dog followed, its basketball-sized skull even with her waist. Seifer looked behind him to see the rest of the men slowly climbing down from the crate piles.

_Wimps_.

Although, admittedly, he was in no particular hurry to get anywhere near that thing either.

Reluctantly, he followed after her, staying a sizable distance behind. The men looked ecstatic to see them go. "I thought you said it was a dog, not a fucking Wendigo cross-breed."

She glared over at him. "He's harmless. All bark and no bite." her smile turned sly. "Not unlike someone else I know."

"Tch, whatever. Don't put me on the same level as _that_ thing." he glared at the animal, who glared right back. "What the hell are you going to do with it? Teach him to eat Trepies, or what?"

"I'm not sure," she replied, ignoring his last comment. "I didn't think they'd send him here. I expected they'd find a home for him in Tromedia-"

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Yeah, 'cause I mean what family _wouldn't_ want him? Of course, he'd probably eat the damned washing machine or tear the mailman's head clean off, but hey, what a lovely pet for the kids. Hell, he'd probably _eat_ the kids."  
   
The dog started growling at him again, but one stern look from Quistis stopped the rumble in the animal's throat. She stopped in the hall, leaning back on the wall and obviously contemplating something.

The dog, evidently bored (and with an attention span that rivaled Zell's), lay down at her feet in a graceless pile and settled its massive muzzle on the floor, regarding Seifer with wary eyes that seemed to burn almost crimson in the light.

Seifer frowned warily back at him.

"I'll work something out." Mused Quistis. "If Rinoa's allowed to keep Angelo here, I don't see why I can't keep him here for awhile until something suitable can be done with him."

"Yeah, Angelo, right." Seifer rolled his eyes. Angelo had simply tried to gnaw at his shins. That hulk at Quistis' feet could probably run off with his fucking leg.

"Well, what are you going to do with him now? We can't take that thing along."

"You're right." She considered. "Zell can watch him. He doesn't have a mission today and he owes me a favor."

"Chicken Wuss? You're going to leave that thing with Chicken Wuss?" he snorted. "That's one _BIG_ fucking favor."

Quistis shrugged. "He owes me." She looked back at him and winked, a trick of the eye that did equally tricky things to his gut. "Besides," she mused. "There's always blackmail."

Seifer followed after Quistis, sighing. For once in his life, he really did feel almost bad for Chicken Wuss. _Almost_.

…

…

…

"You want me to _WHAT_?!" exclaimed Zell, looking down at the mutt tangled between Quistis' legs. Hell, if she squatted down an inch it would look like she was riding the damned thing. That was one hell of a dog.

A dog that, currently, was baring his teeth at him with what looked like a miniature cutlery set pounded into its frothing pink gums.

"No!" ordered Quistis, tapping him lightly on the nose. "Bad dog!" The dog's snarl stopped, but the creature still held Zell in his gaze, eyes burning with a hungry, crimson fire-

"Zell, _please_?"

Zell put his hands up. The young man was still in his pajamas, which consisted of long black pants and a plain white cotton t-shirt. Quistis was fairly sure they'd woken him up. "No way, Quistis! No way!"

"He's harmless!"

"Harmless my _ass_! The thing's a walking Marlboro trap on legs!"

For once, Seifer was inclined to agree with the witless wonder boy in front of him.

An angry frown marred Quistis' features. "You **owe** me, Dinct!"

He took another look at the dog. "Not _that_ much I don't!"

"Remember when you forgot Arya's birthday for the second year in a row and I let you give her MY present so she wouldn't un-man you?"

Seifer chuckled.

"Remember when you stole an entire shipment of hot dogs from the cafeteria and hid them in my room, then tried to cook them with my curling iron? **I** didn't un-man you, did I?"

Zell looked uneasy.

"And I seem to remember a certain junior classmen some years back involving a lack of discretion in the women's locker room...and I never ratted said individual out. And I still haven't told Arya about the t- board incident-"

Seifer frowned. "The t-board incident?" **This** could be interesting.

Quistis smiled wickedly. "I'm sure _Seifer_ would be interested to hear about that...or perhaps he'd like to hear about the flying mo-"

"All right! All right! Geez, Quistis!" swore Zell, allowing both her, Seifer, and the Beast from the Black Lagoon to walk into his room. It was about as neat as the aftermath of a cyclone- books, clothes, and gloves were strewn about the room in haphazard piles. Zell scowled darkly at the beast. "He's gonna mess up my room."

Seifer snorted. "Like anyone'd be able to tell. You actually bring your girlfriend in here, or did you lose her in one of the piles?"

The young man's eyes narrowed. "Hey, screw you! Why don't you-"

"Stop it you two. We don't have time for this. Zell, just keep him here all day, maybe take him out for a walk once or twice and feed him this evening. I'll be back tonight, okay?" Quistis walked into Zell's bathroom, opening his cabinet and taking out a packet of gauze, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a tube of ointment.

"Yeah, help yourself!" called Zell, staring warily at the dog.

Quistis ignored him as she approached the hulking mass, which sat calmly as she began to tend to his cuts. The mongrel whined when she touched a particularly tender area, and Quistis fussed over him. "Poor thing," muttered Quistis, dabbing each of the cuts and applying a liberal amount of salve to each one.

Zell's shoulders slumped in defeat. "What's he eat?"

"Chicken Wusses," smirked Seifer.

The young man's expression darkened. "Almasy, I'm gonna-"

Quistis rolled her eyes as she threw the bloody gauze into the already overflowing wastebasket. "Knock it off, you two." She put her hands on her hips and gave him her meanest glare, reminding him very much of the old Instructor he'd once known and loathed. "Seifer, quit provoking him, and Zell-" Quistis turned her gaze on him. "Quit letting him provoke you."

Zell sighed and broke eye contact with Seifer long enough to regard the demon creature. "What's this thing's name, anyway?"

Quistis frowned. She knew she'd heard the old man address the dog more than once, but she was drawing a blank. "I don't know...S-something."

"Selphie?" smirked Seifer. The mouth was about as big…

Quistis shrugged. "I don't know. I've heard that with dogs it's not the word precisely, but the syllables and harsh and soft tones. Although by the looks of his teeth I'm guessing that he's relatively young, so it probably wouldn't be too hard to rename him."

"Like the thing's going to listen to Chicken Wuss here. Hell, if I were a dog-"

"What do you mean _if_?" sneered Zell.

"Look, _chicken_-" snarled Seifer.

"**Seifer**-" started Quistis, exasperated. The dog perked its head up and barked, startling all three into silence.

"Seifer? That 'thing's' name is Seifer?" hooted Zell.

Seifer glared at Zell and opened his mouth to say something.

"No...that's not it...but it must be something close to it," mused Quistis aloud, ignoring the two squabbling men in front of her. Finally, she shrugged. "Oh well, just call him that for now, I suppose."

"The hell if you're giving my name to that walking drool factory!"

Zell once again broke into laughter. "This is great- two lapdogs, one name!"

The overgrown mutt at Quistis' feet was FAR from a lapdog, but Quistis refrained from comment.

"Let's go, Seifer," she ordered, grabbing the blonde man by the arm and dragging him out before he could attempt serious bodily harm to the shorter man in front of him.

The door closed behind them, leaving Zell with a monstrous, cantankerous beast that looked less than pleased to see Quistis go. 'Seifer Jr' turned from the door, a low growl boiling in his throat. The name, apparently, was appropriate.  
_  
Zell swallowed. What _had he gotten himself into?

…

…

…

"Are you gonna miss Zell?" asked Seifer as they walked to the garage, Quistis looking on her rental ticket. Seifer himself had never checked out a vehicle from the Garage before, so he assumed that's what it was. Well, he hadn't checked one out _officially_, anyway.

"What do you mean?" asked Quistis, brushing a shorter lock of hair out of her eyes as she turned to look at him. The white sweater complimented her fair, golden complexion, bringing out the hues of blue in her eyes, and the jeans did nice things for her ass. She looked almost human.

Hell, who was he kidding? She was fucking hot….damnit.

"Well, you practically volunteered him for dog food."

She gave an exasperated sigh. "Honestly, that dog is harmless. I don't know why you're afraid of him."

_Stop staring at her chest, Almasy_.

"I'm not afraid of a damned dog," he replied haughtily. He tore his eyes away from her just long enough to admire the other beauties of the room-

The cars.

The garage was practically every male SeeD's wet dream. Hummers, off-road trucks with large trailer hitches to accommodate machine guns and other short-set up offensives, five Flankers and six Ruts, crude terms to describe a truck with a large, extendable planks that served as moving cover for ground troops and the second vehicle a low-riding six cylinder engine with a sharp titanium tip used for boring holes in everything from buildings to enemy troop lines. A rather morbid thought, but hell, this was a military academy. Everything had morbid undertones.

A set of G-Mo's, or GGM's, General Ground Mobiles, large, sturdy, tank- like trucks, stood off to the side. Those were relatively new mobile machine guns that sported a make and clip size about the same as those equipped on the ships. Interesting. Those must have set Garden back a couple million gil or so a piece.

To the left there were nice cars, finely tuned. And that was to say nothing of the two sports cars that stood at the edge of the garage, all sleek sides and polished chrome wheels.

Seifer stopped in his gluttonous eye feast of machinery to turn back to where Quistis had apparently found their rented car.

A fucking two-door sedan.

Seifer rolled his eyes. Leave it to Trepe to pick the most boring car in the lot. He gestured at her. "Could you pick a _less_ interesting car, Trepe?"

Her gaze was directed on a ring of keys, meticulously rooting through them in favor of a particular cut pattern. "We don't want to attract attention, Seifer. Besides, it's only to the bus station. I don't want to get my civilian clothes messed up on the trek there."

He glanced over to a particularly familiar red convertible coupe. A wicked gleam caught his eyes. "Hey, is that Squall's-"

"Don't even think about it, Almasy." Replied Quistis as she slid into the driver's seat, not bothering to look up.

He turned back to her. "What, don't I get to drive?" he asked, even as he gripped edge of the hood, sliding into the passenger side and slamming the door.

Quistis reached up to check the rearview mirror, catching Almasy's wicked smile in the process. "Nope." She replied, waiting for Garden's clearance door to open. "Maybe if you're a good boy, I'll let you drive home."

He chuckled. "Not likely, Trepe."

…

…

…

"I used to think you actually had to be a Grandma to drive like one, but once again, Trepe, you've proved me wrong." observed Seifer, putting his feet up on the opposite set of seats.

Quistis just rolled her eyes as she turned, her posture molded into pencil-straight Instructor pose she used when she was about to mother him. "Seifer, just because a person actually observes traffic signs and speed limits doesn't mean-"

He smirked up at her. "Observing the speed limit huh? I think I saw a Funguar pass us on the shoulder."

"Har har."

The crank of the train's wheels below was rhythmic, soothing. Quistis leaned back in the cushioned seat, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at the emerald ribbon of landscape that streamed by.

He sat beside her, curiously silent as he, too, watched the slideshow of scenery pass by. The silence was curious, but not uncomfortable, each wondering at the other's thoughts.

Both were remembering back to another train ride, one that lurked in a past that was not so serene. One that he had pushed her, dazed, against the wall and she had yelled, ordered, pleaded, tried to cling to her pupil even as the waves of fate dragged him out, tried to pull back in what she had never really had a grip on to begin with.

She never took her eyes off the window. Regret was on her lips, the bitter taste lingering on her tongue as she narrowed her eyes, torn between speaking and silence. She bit it back. What good were apologies in moments like this? Words were a dangerous game with Seifer, each thought and syllable a precarious tottering on offense and defense, one that eventually became a game she never seemed to win.

Things were equal and unequal between them, give and take and take again. She had faint memories of childhood, of his dark form looming over hers. He had always been the stronger one. Until now. Not it was he that strayed back, eyes wary, all his former cocky confidence a thin veil behind tired green walls.

Although, she thought wryly, it was returning.

She decided on a safe topic. The 'mission.'

"Assuming we can even find this woman in Balamb, what are you going to ask her?"

Seifer shrugged. "Where the hell she was when her kids disappeared. From the paper, I'm guessing her kids may as well have been orphans, like the others. Like that kid in Trabia."

"You're making an assumption about that child's background. We know nothing about him, save that no one cared enough to report him missing," Quistis sighed.

"Look, I can't…explain it. I just think…I think something's going on."

"Well, that very well may be. We have to make sure not to sound too suspicious, though. As of today, we're just Tarren Kirk and Sylvia Aren, two concerned citizens doing a follow-up for-"

"A local Balamb paper." Finished Seifer. He flashed a grin at her. "You can be my lackey."

She cast him a cutting smile in return. "Hm. Enjoy the illusion while it lasts."

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed him still staring at her, a bemused smile on his face. "What?" she asked, annoyed.

"Oh, nothing. Just imagining you running to do my bidding."

"Keep dreaming." Grinning, she punched him in the shoulder. Faking injury, he gripped his arm, getting a laugh out of her.

"You goof." She sighed, leaning back in her seat.

Her eyes fell back to the window, flickering along the blurs of trees and roads that whirred by. Her eyes met his in the glass. He held her gaze, a stare that squirmed in her breast, clawing some nameless emotion up to the surface. "You've changed." She said quietly.

His eyes darkened, guarded as he held her eyes. "Are you sure about that?" he asked quietly, his voice deep, gritty, asking and doubting her all at once.

She turned to look at him, face to face, without the cold barrier of the window between them. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out, and her mouth seemed similarly frozen. There was practically only a heartbeat between them, and he could feel her breath on his cheeks, eyes staring up into his for a heated moment before turning away.

"We'll be there any minute." She said, as if nothing had happened at all, twisting her body slightly towards the window again. He shut his mouth, staring after her at the traveling landscape and wondering what would have happened had she not turned away.

Something stupid, probably.

…

…

…

_  
_  
"Train, train, take us away-"

"Selphie, I swear ta Hyne, you sing that song one more time I'm gonna jump off the train myself."

Arya smiled, shrugged, then returned to her book. Irvine cocked his head to study the title. "Men are from Dollet, Women are from Trabia". Irvine squinted at the cover, which contained some other fine print. Hm- one of those books that attempted to decode the opposite sex. Although what she wanted to get out of Zell that she couldn't bribe with hot dogs was beyond Irvine.

Selphie turned from the window and gave him her best pout. "You don't like the song?"

Irvine turned to her, nudging the brim of his hat up just slightly. "I think the twenty-third time was the charm, darlin'. 'Sides, you wanna save your voice for all the questions, right?"

"Yep! Good thinking, Irvy! I've got a good plan allllll lined up!" Selphie gave him a quick thumbs-up before turning back to the window, admiring the landscape. Irvine just smiled. He knew how much Selphie liked trains. After spending two years together, he hadn't found much of anything Selphie didn't like. Explosives, trains, unconventional positions- Irvine smiled and shook his head. Selphie was constantly full of surprises.

Arya looked up from her book, folding one of her pages in to mark her place before snapping it shut. "Do you honestly think GTO is going to give up its invoices?" the young woman looked thoughtful. "Although Garden is one of its major clients, I don't doubt for a moment that the smaller portion of their clientele consists of organizations that are…less legitimate."

Selphie shrugged, still staring out the window and leaning her elbows on the pane. "That's no concern of B. Garden's. According to the recovery crew at the IGCS site, it's their prototypes that were involved in the indiscretion. Unless they want their own business to go under investigation, they'll hand out their invoice copies."

Irvine gazed over at his girlfriend. "This is obviously just the first step."

"What do you mean?" asked Arya, leaning forward in her seat.

"Think about it." Replied Irvine, crossing his arms, hat sloping almost thoughtfully across his brow. "What's the best way to take out a ruby dragon?"

Arya shrugged, Selphie simply turned away from the window to regard him with a quizzical look.

"You shut down all its senses, " he replied, joining Selphie at the window. "Last year a bunch of us were camped out in Trabia, freezing our asses off in one small tent while we waited for a bunch of local terrorists to try to make a contraband exchange in the middle of a snowfield." Arya and Selphie listened attentively- Irvine was known for his storytelling abilities. Selphie particularly enjoyed them, as long as they didn't involve past girlfriends.

Irvine'a eyes sparkled with his audience. "All of a sudden, up comes this big ol' Ruby Dragon, although you can tell it's just a full-grown adolescent by the light-colored crest on its head. So we're thinking, shit, this thing is gonna smell us, blow our cover, but all of a sudden, here comes this swarm of Gaylas."

Arya frowned. "I didn't know they were a pack-type monster."

"Not really," replied Irvine. "But if it's a slow-going winter and there's not much food, they tend to stick together. So anyway, I figure there was about fifteen of 'em, no more than twenty, and they all snake onto the snowfield, and before I know it they're surrounding this Ruby Dragon. So we think 'stupid Gayla's are gonna make this dragon a nice snack', but all of a sudden, as if on some cue, the fluorescents on their bellies start blinking and they all cast Sleep on the thing. The Ruby Dragon drops, and while the thing's out cold, they spit that acrid mystery fluid shit on the it, so that by the time it wakes up, it's too gummed down to move and already half-eaten."

Selphie made a face.

"But the point is," continued Irvine, "They shut down its senses. A Ruby Dragon could outsmart and out-cast and out-maneuver a Gayla any day, but they took out its offensive, and when it was in the dark, they zapped its strength. And that's what they've done to us- they shut down our communication network. So now, each Garden is running deaf, and I have a feeling if the group's plans go their way, pretty soon we'll be running blind."

The handsome cowboy's expression turned serious as he regarded the two female SeeDs in front of him, both now wearing preoccupied expressions. "Pretty soon, they'll attack. Just's soon as we're in the dark...mark my word."

And at the moment, Irvine had the unnerving feeling that somewhere, a light had just gone out.

…

…

…

Squall narrowed his eyes at the board before them. He liked a room full of politicians as much as he liked the idea of bathing in acid or eating a glass sandwich. His job as Commander of G. Garden afforded him the more technical aspects of running a military establishment, which he liked just fine. Save the schmoozing for Cid, or Xu, or someone who could oil themselves up with the best of them and skate the slippery slopes of politics with ease.

"Commander Leonhart," Drake Winsburg, Mayor of Tromedia, stood to address him, and his lip curled. Hands as smooth as a baby's ass and tailored suit with brass buttons. The portly man had probably never seen a day of battle in his life.

Despite Rinoa's assertions to the contrary, Squall Leonhart still would not drop his theory that all politicians were Propagators wearing human skins.

"I myself could like to ask what justifications you can provide for the somewhat…liberal measures you took in infiltrating the IGCS?"

Squall stood, ignoring the microphone set on the table to address his questioner at eye-level. The man seemed taken aback at the move. The man probably wasn't used to looking people in the eye. "You can call it whatever you want. Communication between all three Gardens was cut off, including Trabia and Galbadia. The men at the gates were uncooperative in granting us entrance under the pretense of neutral ambassadors, so we were forced to seek out other methods. None of the citizens of your town were harmed as a result of Garden's directives, so I hardly see what business it is of yours."

"Our tourism, our surrounding area-"

_Not to mention your garbage truck_, thought Squall wryly.

Squall narrowed his eyes. "Your town has been more than compensated for its inconveniences. Not that you've ever had a problem accepting money, am I right?"

A gavel struck from far off. "Mr. Leonhart," interrupted Mr. Giuyson, elected chair of the Tri-Garden council and possibly the one man at the front table that Squall had any respect for. At least the older gentleman had been a Trabian commander once, and a good one. "You will allow others to finish their sentences, or you will be expelled from this meeting. Is that understood?"

"Understood." Replied Squall curtly, glowering at Winsburg, who was now smiling smugly. The fat little man wouldn't be so smug on a battlefield, not with a gunblade in his fat gut.

"You may be seated." Continued Giuyson.

Still glaring at the bloated official, Squall slunk back into his seat.

_Still trying to get out of the meeting, huh?  
_  
Squall tried to resist a smile at Rinoa's soft voice in his head.

_Think it's working?_ He sent back.

Though she had been forbidden from the meeting, she communicated to him through the stuffiness of the building's lounge just outside the doors. Honestly, he hadn't wanted her to come, but the young sorceress would not be swayed. She was in danger everywhere- at least here, he could watch out for her. Secretly, he was glad for her presence- she was a drop of sanity in all this chaos. She was watching the meeting through his eyes, and he knew that she, too, was less than encouraged by what had transpired so far.

"Darwin Drosskow," said Giuyson, looking up from his papers. "I understand it was your system that failed."

"_My_ system did not fail." A young man with slick hair and an even more slippery smile got to his feet. He wore an expensive suit with wingtip shoes, and his eyes were sharp and quick, like a lawyer's. Squall disliked him immediately.  "The system was advanced enough to repair itself. It is, essentially, a self-contained operating system, but in the highly unlikely event that an internal malfunction would occur in the operation that was irreparable within the system itself, the maintenance crew would have been notified. The system is flawless…unless the maintenance crew was incompetent-" He glanced at Squall. "Or dead."

Squall glared at him.

Giuyson looked bored with Darwin already. Squall could relate.  "Is there anyone that could have infiltrated the system remotely?"

Darwin shook his head. "Absolutely not. The lines of code within the security system I installed in the IGCS system are too numerous and too fast for any hacker, even a very good hacker, to infiltrate. Unless of course," the young man chuckled. "The hacker **was** a computer."

Squall glared over at Galbadia's side of representatives as Drosskow took his seat.

Martine hadn't even shown up. Instead, Syrus Draishire, a tall, gaunt looking man with hollow cheeks and an expressionless face, had been sent in his place. Squall liked Martine's second-in-command even less than he liked Mayor Winsburg. His dark eyes were pressed like two lumps of coal within the gaunt, flapping flesh of the man's face, the stoic man's mouth set like a thin red line under a long, crooked nose and a dimpled chin. The man hadn't said a single word since he arrived, apart from the explanation that Martine was otherwise detained and sent his apologies for his absence. Draishire hadn't taken his gaze off Squall throughout the course of the meeting, and the man's eyes were beginning to burn a hole in his back.

Xu had already given her testimony, and, true to Propagator nature, the senators, mayors, and Presidents had all lined up to gnaw at her. The worst was Barlk Sirri, Winhill's representative, who, unlike Drake, bore a sharp, nervous demeanor, like that of a rabid rat. Barlk had never been an advocate of Garden- in fact, since he was elected, he had done everything to stop and stall the military institution. Barlk was not a warrior in any sense- he was an aristocrat's son, but one that knew the power of paperwork. He'd used it to his advantage, passing addendum after addendum into Garden's already lengthy contract. A situation like this was perfect for someone like Sirri, who used his chance at interrogating Xu to its full potential.

An hour and a half later, Xu had sat down, her hands steady but her eyes shaken. She shared a look with him now.

Things were not going well.

In spite of the evidence presented, the IGCS repairmen identities were found to match those of the 'soldiers' buried in the rubble along with a few men that remained unaccounted for. Not much could be ascertained from the pile of rocks and wires that remained, and with Quistis' star witness six feet under, B. Garden had little to no evidence supporting their own innocence in sabotaging the IGCS aside from a single oral testimony signed in chicken scratch.

B. Garden was looking at probation...or worse, suspension of operation. None of the Gardens had ever been privy to such a sanction, and it was looking more and more like Balamb was going to be the first.

Sirri stood. "If I may address the council." He continued at Giuyson's nod. "Balamb Garden has long entertained a grudge against Galbadia Garden, who has not made any attempt to hide their distaste for the fact that a military establishment such as Balamb Garden houses not only one active Sorceress, but two former killers as well who, during the Sorceress War, slaughtered many innocents-"

Cid rose, face red with anger. "Preceding legislature also passed granting her absolution two years ago-" Squall's own blood boiled at the man's mention of Rinoa and the woman who for years had been his surrogate mother.

"-was a double standard, and you know it, Cid," replied Sirri smoothly. "The legislation passed granting the ex-sorceress and her knight absolution was on paper only."

"You-" began Cid, his face curled into uncharacteristic lines of rage.

"In fact, let it show on the record that B.Garden's commander Squall Leonhart is a knight of the Sorceress Rinoa himself, and that Balamb Garden now houses Seifer Almasy, former knight of former Sorceress Edea. Does this seem to be an impartial military operation to you, gentlemen?"

Murmurs erupted.

Squall stood. "If you're suggesting, without any concrete proof, that B.Garden is responsible-"

Sirri folded his hands. "I'm not suggesting. I'm stating. Furthermore, Mr. Leonhart, I do believe that as the party in question, the burden of proof lies with you, does it not?"

"You egg-sucking son of a-"

Cid's hand on his shoulder. "Sit **down**, Squall." Begrudgingly, the Commander complied.

Sirri smiled. "Despite young Leonhart's evident and adamant refusal of this claim, the facts remain, gentlemen. The Sensbots used were military prototypes ordered in mass quantities, which only a large operation could have accumulated, Balamb's fingers are not only sticky but practically glued together with espionage, and a symbol of unity and peace between these three great unified Gardens lies in ruins with SeeD's prints all over the wreckage. Now, I ask you, who could have the most to gain from the destruction of the other Gardens? Trabia has little to gain, since its programs depend mainly on Galbadia and Balamb for the specialization of their troops. Only Balamb, however, has two Sorceresses, and I do not think it would be simple speculation to say that their ambition is no longer remotely connected to its original intent. In fact, it seems as if Balamb's new operative is to _collect_ Sorceresses, not kill them-"

Both Squall, Cid, and Xu stood at the same time, all speaking at once.

"Are you suggesting-"

"Are you accusing-"

"I object to this outright-"

Giuyson's gavel once again echoed through the room. "That's enough, all of you."

Cid chose that moment to stand, adjusting his glasses and smoothing his vest. "My SeeDs did nothing short of what they were trained to do. A formal request was sent to the IGCS in the hopes of ascertaining the communications failure- it was met with no response. Every attempt was made to contact the other Gardens- neither responded to direct lines. My SeeD's were sent to rectify the situation- they assessed the situation, proceeded with caution, and met an unfortunate circumstance, just as we encountered in years previous during the time of the second Sorceress War. I ask you for your confidence now, and not your accusations. Does it not seem to you, gentlemen, an odd coincidence that Balamb Garden's star witness was senselessly murdered within days of these hearings? We do not ask for the benefit of the doubt- I have my finest men and women working on leads that will, I believe, soon lead us to the truth and resolve all doubts that this board may have regarding Balamb's innocence in the matter."

Sirri had not seated himself, but instead, faced B. Garden's Headmaster. "The time of your military monopoly is over, Cid. I do believe that when you took in the refuse of the Sorceress Wars, your objectivity was destroyed. Having said this, I move to demote you from position of Headmaster by calling for a vote of no confidence by reason of prejudicial operations and move further to suspend all military operations within Garden until this matter is resolved."

Squall and Xu were back on their feet in seconds, and the room was instantly in an uproar with Giuyson trying in vain to restore order. Xu looked ready to jump the table and wring Sirri's slim throat, and Squall's thoughts ran along the same line. Cid stood calmly, his hands at his sides.

Giuyson stood, his robes rippling with the motion. "That will be all, gentlemen!" he roared, smashing the gavel into the marble plank beneath so hard it shattered into wooden splinters. The room quieted, but a few murmurs still rang out. "I am ordering a period of fifteen minutes recess, and when we return, I'll expect this meeting to be conducted in a professional manner. The way it's thus far been handled is disgusting and unbecoming of men-" he glanced at Xu. "And _women_ of military prestige." He attempted to bang his gavel, then looked at the now bare handle of his tool. "Dismissed!" he barked.

Squall, Xu, and Cid hung back as the throng of gentlemen filed out. Squall caught Laguna's eye and gave him a curt nod in response. He still wasn't comfortable addressing the man as 'father', but he didn't hate the president quite as passionately as he used to. This was in part thanks to Rinoa's insistence that he accept his father's dinner invitations to the presidential mansion. So far, Laguna had been one of the only ones to speak on Balamb Garden's behalf. It made Squall sick. Over half the towns being represented had been helped by Balamb Garden during hard times, and yet, only a handful had even called for time and evidence in its defense.

"What are we going to do?" asked Xu, eyes on Cid. Squall also glanced over, his hands still balled at their sides. Damned politicians, hungry sharks circling the waters while justice and innocent people got lost around them.

Cid, however, maintained his composure. Reflecting, Squall could count on a single hand the number of times he'd actually seen Cid rattled. The Headmaster smiled at them. "We wait for the Balamb team to turn up evidence. Be patient," he assured, putting his hands on their shoulders and smiling at them. "Our team won't let us down. Now, come. Settle down. Don't let them see us rattled."

Rinoa was waiting for them in the lounge, and Squall didn't miss the worried look in her eyes. It had been sitting there since they left, an odd expression out of place on the young sorceresses' normally cheerful face. "What's wrong, Rinoa?" he asked, letting her take his arm as they walked out into the conference hall. The young woman looked away, her dark eyes focused on the light that sprayed down like liquid diamonds from the dimly lit chandeliers.

"I don't know. Just tired, probably. I'll…I think I'll feel better when we get back home."

Squall nodded and looked around the room. Rich velvet couches and similarly colored crimson carpets furnished the fancy hall that when not used for business reservations was used for grand balls held for its political functions. The crowd was thick with hotel personnel and business officials. The knight and commander shifted in the crowd, his cold blue eyes scanning the room. He hated crowds, and a crowd of politicians made a swarm of ruby dragons look like heaven.

He turned to ask Cid about the time when he felt Rinoa's hand tighten around his arm. After that, time slowed. A scream raced out, strung like metal shards tearing through his ears, and the whatever words he'd been about to speak died on his lips.

An echo blasted in his ears, a whirring explosion close to his right shoulder that to every soldier was as familiar as a heartbeat. And he whirred, shouting, spinning, trying to find the soul whose destiny that sound sought to change forever, and found it-

_Too late_.


	23. Moomba Scouts and Train Rides

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter._  
-__Nietzche_

Chapter 20

Zell sat on the edge of his bed, hands splayed out across his knees and tapping a nervous cadence against bare kneecaps. He'd changed into a pair of plain blue shorts and a white hooded sweatshirt, combed his hair, and finally, plopped down on the mattress, all in one far-off corner of the room. His eyes were constantly focused on the corner opposite him, making sure the items in that corner stayed in one place.

The other room's occupant, the demon, sat at the other end, watching him with a half snarl that seemed to permanently etch up the creature's pink gums in a tireless, malevolent smile. It was weird feeling, changing in front of a dog, especially one that looked ready to run off with his family jewels at any given moment. The dog watched his movement, unmoving, but continued to regard him with the canine version of T-Rexaur ferocity.

Cerberus. That's what the damned thing was. Granted, it was missing two heads, but this one more than made up for the loss. The creature's massive, nearly cantaloupe-sized feet were tipped with amber-colored, blood-caked claws that badly needed cutting, and the dog's dark coat was covered in matted blood and sawdust from whatever hapless crate had shipped it. One of the dog's ears was torn and bleeding, but the origin of the other blood was a mystery. Probably some hapless shipping man.  Zell's over-active imagination had already cooked up entire villages slain under the beast's jaws, hot dog vending machines torn in half by four-inch fangs….

_Why the hell had he agreed to do this?_

Oh, yeah. _Blackmail_.  As far as he was concerned, he never owed Quistis for anything again…assuming he lived to fully rid himself of the debt.

"So, uh, _Seifer_." he started, unsure of what to do with the thing. He had never owned a dog before. The closest he had ever come to a pet was an Iguion egg he'd found in some tall brush when he was a kid, and that had lasted all of two minutes before his mother threw a fit and shoved it down the garbage disposal before it could hatch and destroy the house.

He felt ridiculous talking to the dog, but the dog's head had cocked slightly when he'd said the name _Seifer_, lessening the dog's severe expression into one of potently hostile curiosity. It was an improvement…sort of.

Zell ran his fingers through his hair. What could he _do_ with this dog all day? Both parties looked at each other, one gaze deeply troubled and the other curiously hostile.

He was going to get Quistis for this.

How the hell was he even supposed to get that thing out of his room? How was _he_ supposed to _get_ out of his room? An idea flashed on-he'd call Arya! She always knew what to do in these situations.  He knew she'd be on the mission for most of the day, but she always carried her mobile messager with her.

He'd call Arya, and _she'd_ figure out what to do with the dog. She was always filled with great ideas and seemed to have become quite…_understanding_ of his predicaments.

To say the least.

"Stay there…uh…_Seifer_." He said, pointing as he reached over to grab his telephone, making sure his ankles were out of 'snacking'-distance. He couldn't keep this thing in his room all day- it would probably eat his dresser. 

He couldn't keep calling the thing 'Seifer', either. It was weirding him out.  Although, he _could_ see could see the distinct similarity between the two cranky sons of bitches. Big, stupid, all bulk and no brain…

"Here, chew on this." He told the mongrel, throwing a pair of dirty socks towards its face. The animal sniffed at them, sneezed, and looked almost mildly insulted…for a dog. Cripes, they didn't smell _that_ bad, did they? Zell picked another pair off the floor, put them to his nose, and gagged. Tomorrow was definitely laundry day. Maybe if he was nice, he could get Arya to volunteer. The mechanics of bleach always seemed to evade him, and the last time he'd tried to wash his own clothes, the dark load had come out pink and the white load…had been _in_ with the dark load, come to think of it.

The mobile communicator beeped twice before he heard her voice, soft and sweet. "Hello?"  Her voice was slightly interrupted by static.

"Hey, Ar. What's up?"

Rumbling could be heard in the distance. "We're still on the train. What? Oh. Selphie says hi."

"Yeah. Tell 'er I say hi. Listen, how much do you know about dogs?"

"Dogs? Why?" He heard Selphie whisper something about underwear. "No, I'm not asking him that." He heard her giggle and heard another train whistle in the background.

"This is important! It's a matter of life or death."  _Or lost limbs_, he added silently, never taking his eyes off the dog, who, in his eyes, seemed ready to tear off the floor at any moment and steal his shoe with his foot still in it.

"Whose life or death?" her voice sounded distant and almost bored at his broad declaration, as if she were used to these troubling phone calls. Hyne, it wasn't as if he was always calling her in some fix, over-exaggerating-

Okay, so he _usually_ was.

Like the time he'd super glued himself to his model bike. Or, the time he'd gotten his fingers stuck in one of those stupid paper prisons. Or the time he'd not so accidentally handcuffed his wrist to a hot dog stand in Esthar in protest of sky-rocketing hot dog prices, only to find out that it was a _mobile_ hot dog stand and that the owner wasn't about to let him get in the way of daily sales by waiting for the handcuff key-

All right, so maybe he called her all the time.

"_My_ life or death!" he practically shouted. The dog perked its head up and growled. Zell uneasily backed up against his nightstand.

Her tone was nothing short of exasperation. "Zell, did you superglue your fingers together again?"  Zell scowled. How _could_ he? After the last incident with the hot dog truck, she'd taken away the glue, and the handcuffs…

"No!" he yelled. "Quistis left this...this _creature_ here with me, and it's gonna kill me!"

"Oh, so the dog arrived! I wondered if they would ship it to Garden." she sounded more bemused than anything else. "You know, it really is hectic down in shipping with all the-"

"Forget about that! Look, what do I do with it? He's about two hundred friggin' pounds and he's got this massive mouth and these gigantic eyes-"

"Aw! He sounds adorable! What breed is he?"

Zell's eyes narrowed. "_Arya_!"  he whined.

He heard her chuckle. "For Hyne's sake, Zell. It's just a _dog_."

"It is not! It's like…_Cerberus's second cousin_ or something!"

A sigh on the other end. "Look, Zell, the train's just about at the station and Selphie says we've all got to change clothes. If Quistis left it with you I'm sure it's not lethal. Why don't you feed it or something?" He could hear the smile in her voice. "I'm sure it likes to eat almost as much as you do."

Zell gave the phone a sour sulk. "Funny. Fine. Y'know, you're gonna feel really bad when you come back and there's nothing left of me but kibbles an' bits-"

"Zell? The connection's cracking up. I'll talk to you-"

_Click_.

Zell glowered at the receiver.  So much for women being the more _sympathetic and understanding_ sex. Zell had once tried (unsuccessfully) to use library books as t-board ramps in a very clever and creative arrangement around the library. Arya, needless to say, had been less than _understanding_. Mild-mannered librarian his _ass_.

Zell rolled his eyes. Women clearly could not be trusted to help in this situation. Quistis had dumped Satan's little helper on him and Arya, his own girlfriend, had laughed at his predicament. The women in his life had a sick sense of humor, that was for sure.  He'd thought Quistis was going to rupture a kidney after that t-board incident; she'd been laughing so hard.

None of this was _funny_, damnit. It was tragic. Why were bad things always happening to him? Fate was probably a woman too…

Sighing and bemoaning his fate, he turned back to face the demon in dispute. The dog was still looking at him, but had rested its head on its paws. It would have been a cute pose of the dog still weren't snarling to all get-out.

"So, uh, hey…uh, _dog_….wanna go for a walk? Sleep? Bite off my leg?" No response, save the tooth-filled smirk permanently etched between pink gums.

That dog looked more like Seifer all the time. 

Zell swallowed. "Uh, want some food?"

The beast barked, sitting up on its massive haunches at the mention of 'food'.

Zell considered. Food…if he could get the dog to follow him out, the thing would become someone else's problem. Nida's problem, maybe…

He reached under his bed, rummaging around. He had to have something down there…hell, he'd practically made a career out of food hoarding as an underclassman. After coming up with 7 dirty socks, a few magazines, and a moldy hot dog bun that for two seconds he considered eating, he came across what he was looking for- a can of beef jerky at least a year old.

"This should do the trick." Opening the lid and curling his nose at the smell, he quickly broke off a hunk of the spicy meat and threw it at the dog, who sniffed it, and after a moment's hesitation, nibbled it off the floor.

So far, so good.

Feeling oddly like Hansel and Gretel, he threw another piece, and another, until the dog had to get up and cross the room to retrieve the second bite. Zell inched along the wall, throwing another piece and opening the door. The dog followed him out into the hall,

It was a start, at least.

Irvine came back from the tiny bathroom provided in their cabin, adjusting the lapels of his coat just as Arya clicked off the phone, ending its transmission capability before they were completely out of range and lost battery power. "Who was that?" asked Irvine.

"Zell," replied Arya, rolling her eyes and grabbing her duffel bag, scooting past him to change. "Something about a dog."

Irvine looked after her. "What'd he do now? Glue himself to another friggin' hot dog truck?"

The long, winding line of the speeding train cut swiftly through Balamb's faded emerald fields, the promise of spring hinting behind the chill of mid-winter breezes. Balamb wore her winter well, and thinly- the ocean breeze stabilized a relatively mild climate. The frost brought a thick coating of snow that lasted but a few weeks, constantly unthawing, but the towns never wore the ivory coat long. Despite the winter months, a tepid breeze hung in the air, carrying warmth from the south to paint the sky gray-blue, chill warring with heat to create a few wisps of storm clouds in the distance. Balamb weather, like everything else in life, was unpredictable.

Two young people sat in cabin 30D, one of the small string of cabins reserved especially for military personnel. Migrations from Balamb Garden to Balamb were so common that B.Garden had signed a contract for the train to make stops solely to pick up the cadets. However, the normal roads were closed, and Quistis, not wanted to walk the three hour trip unjunctioned, had opted to take the car on the seldom-traveled side roads to the station.

Quistis's blonde hair sloped over her shoulder a tight fishbone braid, hands folded tightly around herself as she gazed out the window. Seifer, meanwhile, stretched out black slack-clad legs across the seats to cross in a lanky, lazy gesture, arms draped just as indolently across the faded red leather as he, too, stared out the window.

Both pretended to have forgotten about the other's presence, but both were equally all too aware of it.

Quistis stared at the pane of newly polished glass, her eyes reflecting but not absorbing the landscape. Thousands of thoughts tumbled through her mind, jumbled like bags of multi-colored marbles spilling all at once down a great winding staircase. Thoughts of the weather rolled down, accompanied by worry over the outcome of the Tri-Garden conference, followed by a stray marble of thought that ran along the lines of a Balamb bakery that made excellent rye bread. Mostly, though, the thought bubbles were fairly and annoyingly consistent.

And most of them had to do with Seifer Almasy.

Seifer stared out the window, sinking his gaze into the rapidly clouding sky as he drummed gloved fingers over the cheap leather seats. Had he wanted to kiss Quistis Trepe?

_Impossible_.

He officially didn't understand her. One moment, she was staring at him, eyes lit with that open, strange look that drew a man in like an ocean tide. Her lips were parted, slightly, eyes flickering as they searched his, and then-

_Ice_.

Nothing had happened, for Hyne's sake. What the hell was he _thinking_? That was the thing- he wasn't. Nothing _good_ could come of anything with Quistis Trepe. She'd drive any sane man crazy…demand the impossible, micromanage a man to death…drive him right out of his mind…

_Damn_.

He didn't understand the attraction. She'd certainly never encouraged him. Hell, she would have seemed a-sexual, if it hadn't been for that body of hers. Quistis, however, didn't seem the sexually repressed teacher type. She just seemed repressed in all areas of her existence. Seifer once thought that Quistis would end up married to her desk, giving birth to file cabinets. She certainly didn't seem interested in any of the other male students, save Puberty Boy, and Hyne knew why.

It was different now, getting to know her, finding the living and breathing person behind the façade she tried so hard to hold up in front of everyone else around her. Behind all that ice, Trepe really was _human, _someone that laughed at his bad moods and drank terrible coffee and blew up Marlboros with a flick of her wrist. She was smart, and he found himself seeking her out just to see what was on her mind, something he could have cared less about in most other girls.

Even with Rinoa, it had never really been that way. They'd been young, and stupid, and more in love with the notion of love than with each other. They had never really talked about anything of importance, and never found out what made the other tick. Not really. She'd thought he was a gallant knight, and he thought she was a beautiful princess…and they were both only half-right. She didn't know about the real Seifer Almasy, the one that wanted the world at his fingertips, the one that looked into the mirror every morning expecting to see the ghost of his father staring back at him. The one that spent every night even more unsure of who he was or what he wanted.

And he knew the same of her. He knew that she hated her father, loved to sit barefoot in trees, and was ticklish behind her left ear, but aside from that, she had just been sweet, and beautiful, and for one summer, his. That kind of possession didn't stick. Candlelight and roses…that was all great and sweet and stupid, but when things went to shit, _everything_ fell apart. She'd slipped like sand through his fingers, and if she hadn't, he would have.

But Quistis…Quistis was different. She was the only person ever to meet him blow for blow in their verbal sparring matches, and the first person ever to really argue with him, even as a child. She had brass balls on the battlefield, but was just as unsure off of it. She had tenaciously pursued him as her student, driving at him with as much assurance as she'd had back then, which admittedly was very little. Even now, she helped him, when really, he didn't deserve anything from anybody.

The woman next to him straightened a little in her seat, tucking a piece of loose hair behind her ear. She was…_something_.

He was unwilling to take that thought any further.

Seifer shoved his skull back into the headrest, closing his eyes.

"Last call!" shouted the conductor, leaning out of the front compartment of the train as the last boarding call rang out. Both Seifer and Quistis jumped at the sound, both unaware that the train had stopped in the first place. Small throngs of people were still waiting to file on- mothers with children, businessmen and the ever-present-and-annoying young couple, holding hands and looking enthralled with everything around them.

Quistis shook herself awake, pulling herself back from the numb, almost-sleep of the resting homeostasis that all SeeDs learned to emulate when not dodging bullets or otherwise inactive. It was like a lulling, silent song, a chill of time that set everything still but sense.

It was a strange sleep, the sleep of a soldier. Rather like the life of one- a halfway measure. Not always awake, but never asleep, emotionally and physically.

Quistis and Seifer disembarked, Quistis slinging her small shoulder bag over her arm and looking around the quaint, rustic city of Balamb. A chilled wind was in the air, but one could still smell the ocean on the breeze, an enticing salt-scent that made Quistis want to walk towards the water. Although it was almost the dead of winter, the breeze was almost warm, inviting, even considering the fact that snow clouds were approaching on the horizon.

"Welcome to Balamb!" exclaimed one man, holding out a pamphlet to the pair. "Beautiful, ocean-front-"

"Tourist trap," snapped Seifer, shouldering the man out of the way.

Quistis muttered an apology, then hurried to catch up with him. "We've been here less than a minute, and already you're being unpleasant!"

Seifer looked down at her. When she was close to him, the almost seven inches in height difference became very apparent, even with her boots on. He knew it annoyed her, and leaned in to tower over her. He sneered down at her with a look that was more snarl than smile. "And?"

Quistis just rolled her eyes. "Just hoping for a _surprise_, I guess."

"Really?" he asked, all sarcastic amusement, as they walked. "I don't believe you _like_ surprises, Ms. Trepe. I think, if you had it your way, you'd micromanage everything to death. Put the whole damn world in a file cabinet."

She bristled, the bright blue of her eyes darkening to that challenging shade of indigo that he liked best. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what I said." He said coolly, crossing his arms, his voice a tone that only rose her defense further. But it was meant to bait her. When it came to her temper, he always seemed to know what length of line to set out, and at what depth of her patience to set the lure.

She wasn't biting. Not this time.

"_Which was what_?" she countered, crossing her arms to imitate his posture. Let _him_ admit what had _almost_ happened, what _would_ have happened….what _might_ have happened….hell, she had probably imagined it.

He started to say something, then apparently thought better of it, narrowing his eyes. "Forget it. I'm not playing games with you." He strolled away, down the narrow streets. She folded her arms, smirking, staying her ground and watching his retreating back with no little amount of amusement. _Five….four…three…two…one_…

"Seifer."

As if on cue, halfway down the street, he turned around, folding his arms across his chest in an exasperated and true-to-fashion-Almasy-sulk. "What?" He scowled.

Quistis suppressed a laugh. "It's that way." She replied, sticking a thumb behind her.

"Fine." He muttered, stalking past her again in the opposite direction. She followed, still trying to repress a chuckle.

They walked side by side, but not without effort. She had to increase her pace to keep up with his, and it annoyed her. He seemed to pick up on this, lengthening his strides till she was practically jogging next to him.

Give and take…push and pull. Quistis sighed.

Back to pushing buttons.

"All right." Selphie Tilmitt folded her hands solemnly and turned to regard her mission partners with a stern knit of her brows.

Both regarded her with slightly baffled expressions.

"Here's the plan!" she announced, rocking back on her heels and gesturing with the energy of a cactuar army on prozac. Her comrades tried to keep their eyes off of their friend's garments long enough to listen.

All three were dressed in civilian attire- Irvine wore a pair of loose khaki pants and a white dress shirt unbuttoned mid-chest, accompanied by a dark leather jacket. Arya wore a regular skirt and sweater set with brown loafers and white knee socks, hair pinned up in a silver clip. All three had changed on the train, Irvine finding out the hard way that leaning on the door just slightly caused it to open, giving a group of old women sitting towards the back something to giggle about for the rest of the trip.

Selphie was wearing, quite possibly, her most questionable outfit yet, and that in itself was a statement. A short, bright green skirt came down barely mid-thigh, complimented with matching bright green knee socks and knee-high brown boots. She wore a white t-shirt unbuttoned to show a tiny amount of cleavage (which, admittedly, was all she was able to procure), and a green vest decorated by bright buttons too numerous to count. A beret was nestled atop her auburn locks, sporting a ridiculously bright red feather. A green sash was tied at her neck, sporting the tiny sewn emblem of a Moomba. Selphie had stepped off the train last, so her comrades hadn't had much time to…_absorb_…her new outfit.

"Selphie," sighed Irvine. "I'm plain _afraid_ to ask about that outfit." _Although_, he thought to himself, _maybe we could use it later_.

His girlfriend beamed. "Haven't you ever heard of the Moomba Scouts?"

"No." replied her two companions, in befuddled unison.

"Well, they have a Timber branch. Rinoa lent me her outfit from when she was a girl."

"But…but…_why_?" asked Arya, still mesmerized by the numerous bright buttons on her friend's jacket.

"Because," replied Selphie, winking, "Who can resist a Moomba Scout?"

Irvine could think of a few people, but he kept his mouth shut.

"I thought you told us to wear clothing that wasn't going to attract attention?" asked Arya, wryly.

"Just following orders!" replied Selphie, pulling out her other 'props'- a clipboard with a bright green feather pen attatched.

"I highly doubt that Cid told you to dress up like an elven prostitute." Muttered Irvine, rolling his eyes.

"_What_ did you say, Irvine?" asked Selphie, green eyes narrowing dangerously.

"He wishes he could hold you, because you look so cute!" replied Arya, elbowing Irvine in the ribs. She'd seen Selphie mad at Irvine, and frankly, was surprised the cowboy managed to live as long as he had. Selphie had a temper proportionate to her sweetness, and Arya was in no hurry to see Selphie convert into Harpy Mode. A happy Selphie was like a ray of sunshine. A mad Selphie was worse than a Ruby Dragon in rut.

Selphie tapped her pen on her clipboard, giving Irvine the evil eye before looking back at her notes. "Right. Well let's get down to business. Irvine and Arya, you guys to check out the invoice, delivery, and order records, by any covert means necessary. I'm gonna find out about any prototypes for the AX-318 slug."

"Why are you looking up new prototypes for that particular model?" asked Arya. "Isn't that a standard issue slug equipped on most primary gun models?"

"Cause that's the type of slug Quistis wormed outta Seifer, and she thinks it's got some new stat-changing additions." Said Selphie as they walked.

Irvine glanced over at his girlfriend. "Speaking of Almasy, Quistis is gonna maim you, Selph, you keep trying to hook the two of 'em up." Irvine shook his head as the group began to walk down the street, over towards the compound. "'Sides, I thought you hated him."

Selphie shrugged. "As the head of the Quisty-Needs-to-Get-Laid committee, I've got to keep all her options open."

Irvine shook his head, clapping a hand to his forehead. "You made a _committee_ out of that?"

"Yep! There's me, and Rinoa, and a couple others- we have a motto and everything!"

Irvine looked disbelievingly at his girlfriend. "Quisty's gonna **kill** you."

"Come on! It's for a good _cause_!" insisted Selphie, grinning impishly. Arya and Irvine just shook their heads and continued along the sidewalk. Like the outfit, it was best not to question most of Selphie's motives.

Irvine frowned at the idea of Almasy and Quistis. While Irvine would be the first to argue that Seifer was a changed man, he himself remained skeptical of the _degree_. Irvine had watched Seifer at the parade that night two years ago, watched the sneer on his lips and saw the madness in his eyes.

Could a man change that much? Especially one like Almasy?

Irvine was fairly sure Quistis would place more importance on who shared her bed than a couple of bed-post notches, but that didn't mean she was unaffected by Almasy altogether. He watched the way she watched him…and it wasn't the way she used to.

He felt protective of Quistis, like a little sister (albeit a hot, unrelated sister) and considered himself and Zell her 'wards' of sorts. Quistis was a great catch, a blonde bombshell with a brain, a great sense of humor (not to mention a great set of legs), and he was determined that the guy she chose would deserve her. Almasy? He was pretty sure that guy had seen the insides of more women's dorms than he had, and he sincerely doubted the guy gave a shit about any of them. Quistis was organized. Everything Seifer did seemed spur of the moment. Quistis needed order, and security. Seifer seemed to thrive on chaos.

Almasy and Quistis? He just didn't see it.

He returned to the conversation, where Selphie was handing out fake names. "I'll be Sheri Gohnson with a G, Arya, you'll be Lola Parks, and Irvyyyyy, you can be Drake Worshen."

"Why do we have to change our names? I wasn't aware this was a _covert_ mission."

"Because," replied Selphie, handing them each a plastic card with a barcode on the back. "Those are the names on your Comp. Tech id's, and we really don't want to customers of BioTech and AmmuCorp that they're being monitored by B.Garden. Annnnd, if we don't do it this way, then we're going to have to come back when all the building closes, and do it the hard way. Besides, with all the crapola going on with the Garden Council, _everything_ we do is covert starting now."

Arya nodded as she clipped her ID card to her shirt. She was in no hurry to do things the hard way. The last time she'd done things difficultly, it was when a SeeD team had ended up hacking an Esthar database to find out the nature of death threats being made against President Laguna Loire. The floor was heat sensitive, and Zell and another SeeD named Ckris had lowered from a rope. The mission request log, however, had ordered tensile strength 1, when really, a 3 was required, dropping her…into the wrong room, due to a mix-up in the maps. She'd spent over an hour in a rat-infested storage room, perched precariously on office boxes to avoid both the floor and the rodents…all because Zell had screwed up the maps. It took dinner at her favorite restaurant and a box of her favorite chocolates to get the martial arts specialist out of the doghouse…and seven different shots to make sure she hadn't gotten rabies.

No, Arya was in no hurry to do things the hard way, although she held no illusions that hacking Ammucorps database was going to be anything but a challenge.

BioTech was a sister company of Ammucorp, which provided most of the revenue for the research aspect of the company's product development. The companies were located so far out of town, it was almost easy to say that the companies weren't so much in Balamb as they were their own mini-city. Both looked extremely out of place in a quiet city like Balamb.

It was a well-known fact that Ammucorp provided equipment to many less than legal groups, but it was a fact that was largely overlooked. Goverments and military operations such as Garden relied on the large-scale products and distribution, and were in no hurry to shut such a corporation down. It was sad, but true.

Business was business, after all.

The buildings were approaching- large, sprawling brick flats with tainted windows in the middle of nowhere. This was going to be interesting.

"Are these actual cards?" asked Arya, turning hers over to look at the somewhat smudged barcode on the back.

"Well…not exactly. Garden doesn't have the funding right now to make _genuine _imitation cards. So they're just sort of…_imitation_. Don't worry though," Selphie said, quickly. "As long as nobody scans them, they're perfectly legitimate."

Irvine and Arya shrugged. SeeD was used to impromptu mission-making…it was what differentiated them from the common junior classman. An underling followed procedure…SeeD invented it.

Irvine chuckled as the group began walking again. "By the way, nice _porn_ name, Arya."

Arya glared at him, hands on her hips. "How would you know it's a pornographically derived name, Irvine? I thought Selphie had you on X-rated restriction."

Irvine glared back at her. "Keep your voice down. Do you want to unleash Ms. Censorship on me?" Hyne knew he loved Selphie to no end, but that temper could melt gunblade metal…

"Wait a minute. How's _Selphie_ know it?" he muttered.

"What?" Selphie turned around once again, clipboard in her fist. She could probably give him a mild concussion with that thing….

Irvine whistled, and Arya turned to look behind her. Selphie just rolled her eyes. "All right. We'll meet by the "Bait, Not Fried' shop in an hour, all right? Synchronize your watches."

"Why?" asked Arya.

"I know, I just always wanted to say that!" she giggled. "Wait a couple minutes before following me, okay? Don't want them to think we're together. I'll see you later, guys!"

Irvine and Arya watched her go. "Think she'll get the information she's after?" asked Arya.

Irvine just chuckled. BioTech didn't have a chance.

"This is great!" Zell exclaimed, appreciating his view of a plate of hot dogs as the newly named 'Cerberus' sat at his feet, happily devouring the tasty treats in whole, greedy gulps.

Cerberus wagged his tail in response. Apparently, food had bought him an ally, at least for the moment.

Amazingly, the dog had followed him around, deciding that, for the moment, a possible provider of more food was to be trusted. Besides, it wasn't as if the dog had a whole lot of choice. The hallways had quickly cleared to make way for the dog, and Zell had soon discovered, with glee, that so did the cafeteria line. Cries of 'beast!' 'monster!' and 'holy Hyne!' had echoed through the line as the throng of people quickly parted like a cactuar herd run amuck a salad shredder, leaving Zell and his canine companion at the front of the line.

The cafeteria lady, Marta, was leaning her meaty arms against the glass case, watching him approach. Zell had his suspicions that Marta was at the head of the hog-dog conspiracy…a wiener ringleader of sorts. Irvine said he was crazy, but damned if there wasn't something untrustworthy about that woman's mole.

Sure enough, Marta had been about to deny him access to his sanctified snack once again, when Cerberus, evidently smelling the hot food, put his paws up on the counter and barked.

"The hell's that!" Marta, startled and evidently seduced by the dog's adorableness (or stench), had given Zell all the hot dogs he could carry.  And, using Cerberus and a four-leg-hot-dog-hauler, the red cafeteria ropes attached to the dog's collar and a couple of trays, Zell had been able to haul quite a few.

Between him and Cerberus, the cafeteria had already suffered a loss of nearly three dozen hot dogs. Most of the casualties had been suffered at the dog's jaws, but Zell was a fair contender in the race. The dog was already past number twenty, but Zell was bringing up the rear admirably.

Zell took another bite of hot dog. Yeah, life was good all right.

He'd just found his new best friend.

…

…

…

Bryon Riner sat at his desk, wrapping his pencil against the tabletop and praying for a meteor to hit the earth. The monitor of his computer hummed a steady, annoying droll, the flash of his cursor burning his eyes as it had been for the past two hours. His coffee was cold, the office plant was dead, and the office fish was working on it, wiggling his tail as it tried to swallow a glass marble. He had named the thing Meuersault out of boredom…and come to think of it, had bought the damned thing to rid himself _of_ boredom. However, it seemed the fish was now infected with the same boredom, and had been trying to kill itself since its purchase. Not that he blamed the thing.

In fact, he was starting to _envy_ the fish.

While a team of scientists behind him developed new weapons of moderate to mass destruction, he sat at a desk and kissed ass for grant money and fielded questions about new products. He didn't go to Esthar University for four years to major in technical draftsmanship and sit at a desk, damnit. It wasn't fair. He knew about the product line as much as any of the bumbling old fools did in that stupid company, so why was he stuck kissing the asses of terrorist organizations and old, ex-military men that had nothing better to do with their money but ensure the brighter fireworks of future wars?

So far he'd taken the phone apart four different times, attempted to hotwire the coffee maker to make a self-detonation device, and read the entire phone book…twice.

He'd also thought of 2,851 to commit suicide.

He was contemplating standing in the company eye-wash station with a couple of naked wires hooked up to his brain when-

"Hello!" a voice rang in his ears, startling him off his chair and knocking his head against the desk in the process. He looked up over the counter to see a pretty brunette looking down on him, all smiles and a green buret.

Embarassed, he got to his feet. "Erhm, yes, welcome to BioTech. How can I help you?"

Hyne, he'd never seen so much _green_ in his life.

The girl beamed even brighter, lighting her face down to the roots of her hair. "My name is Lucy Jameson, and I'm the leader of the Moomba Scout division of Balamb."

She couldn't be more than…wasn't she a little old for a Moomba Scout? Furthermore, why was she here?  "I wasn't aware we had a Moomba scout division." He said, rubbing the back of his head where he'd smacked the table and trying hard not to stare down her shirt.

How the hell did she get past the guards?

"We have one now!" she exclaimed.

He frowned. "You seem a little old to be a Moomba Scout."

"Aw, gee thanks, mister!" she exclaimed, setting her clipboard up on the counter.

"So, uh, how can I help you…" he trailed off purposely, hoping this was going somewhere, but really, not caring. This would probably be the most excitement he got all day.

"Well, I'm here selling cookies for the Moomba Scouts! Each of your purchases funds one of our many exciting field trips to the Salt Flats or to the barren tundra of Trabian wasteland." She looked down at her clipboard. "We have Cactuar Truffles, Carbuncle Crisps….ummmm Mint Moombas, and-"

"Um…you know...this is really isn't a place for little kids….er…..Moomba Scouts...cookie sales…"

The girl just tilted her head to the side, looking innocuous. "Why not?"

"Well, this building is sort of….top secret." He finished lamely.

"Really? Cool! You guys probably build all sorts of cool secret weapons here, huh?" _That's it, Selphie. Play dumb._

Her enthusiasm was almost cute. "You might say that." He replied, deliberately evasive.

"Oh, wow! So you probably gotta be really _smart_ to work here then, doncha?" Her eyes were like saucers, green depths sparkling with an innocent awe. It was refreshing, and he felt his ego inflate just a little. "You must be one of the big scientists that works here and does all the cool weapon developments stuff, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. In fact, you might say, I'm the head scientist." This was getting interesting.

"Wow! You must know everything!"

He grinned. "Oh, yeah. Of course."

Selphie smiled inwardly to herself. His name tag read 'office clerk'….there was nothing better than a middleman with delusions of grandeur_. Does he think I can't read_? Oh well, middlemen were the easiest to manipulate, anyway. "So, theoretically, you'd know whether you guys could implement quick-action poison counters on standard slugs, say an A31-ammo slug?"

"_What_?"

Selphie blanched. _No big words, Tilmitt!_ "Errr-hmm….so, you guys could probably invent a bullet with poison built right in, couldn't you it?" she mused aloud. For extra effect, she twirled her hair.

The man smiled. "Maybe. It's probably a little too complicated for someone your age."

Selphie retrained a frown. Too complicated? _Not likely, buddy_. She managed to restrain her mechanical pride, however, and put on her sweetest smile. "Oh, you're probably right," she sighed in her most saccharine of voices. "You can't blame a girl for being curious, though!"

The man was still giving her a rather funny look, one that bordered right on suspicion.

"That's a really big computer!" she said, changing tactics. "There must be **lots** of stuff on there, huh?"

Bryon just smiled indulgently. This girl asked a question a second. Were all Moomba Scouts this…annoying?

"Yep. All of BioTech's new products are registered here. Unfortunately, it's all very top secret, so I can't show any of it to you." Aside from public customer grants and public files (and his highest game of solitaire), there was nothing on the computer that he had access to, anyway, but she didn't need know that. In fact, she didn't need to know any of this stuff. He didn't know why he was telling her anything, come to think of it.

He looked up to see the girl still staring at him, her arms folded under her chin and an innocent smile on her face. She really was pretty…and certainly didn't look twelve…Man, his superior was going to have his head for this if he came in and saw him fraternizing with a Moomba Scout while he was supposed to be kissing the asses of five different retired generals for enough grant money to support a new blast compressor….

 He looked over at her. "Are you gonna leave if I order something?"

She pretended to consider, tapping the hideous green feather pen against her chin. "Ummm…maybe."

"All right. Just a minute." He reached into his pocket, only to find that his wallet must have been put into his coat pocket. "Uh, just a second. I'll get my wallet. Just stay there, all right? And don't touch anything."

"Okay!" the girl beamed. "Will you do my a huuuuge favor and ask the other scientist guys if they want some, too? We'd really like enough money to take a camping trip in Timber this summer…to help out the orphans and whales and stuff."

**Are** there any whales anywhere near Timber? Shit.

"Uh, sure, fine." She watched the guy disappear into the back room after a furtive glance over his shoulder.

 Selphie watched as the younger man hurried out between sliding doors, the air puffing out behind him. Hmmm….airtight rooms….something very interesting was going on back there, no doubt. Wasting no time, she hefted herself belly-down onto the counter, leaning over to access the computer mainframe.

She quickly minimized the solitaire game, leaving a blank blue screen with a flashing cursor. She glanced at the sheet in her hand that Arya had written up for her, and grunting as her feet left the floor.

COMMAND: OPEN CLIENT LIST

Please enter your password

"Shit." Muttered Selphie. She leaned forward even further, reaching into her blouse and pulling out a simple disk that Arya called a 'Cracker'. It was a CCC or simple crack-code-card, a homemade disk that Arya often used to hack computers outside of Garden. Arya, in fact, with Nida's help, had set up the disk sets, and the hacker package was now a mission set (like the Med-kit), required by all special ops SeeD teams with at least one of the group members trained at a novice hacking level. Selphie had taken the class, but did not consider herself nearly as computer-friendly as Arya. She was still a big fan of violence and technology, a mixture that seemed to work pretty well…most of the time.

Grunting, she inserted the disk into the appropriate drive. The skirt was really beginning to ride up, and the modesty shorts were just aiding in the attempt to cut off all circulation below her waist. Rinoa had been one skinny little Moomba Scout, damn her.

**COMMAND: ****RUN DRIVE**** A.**

Selphie waited, stuck in her rather unorthodox position over that counter for the moment as the computer processed the new disk information. From what Selphie understood, it just reinstalled a new list of codes momentarily without alerting system security. Frankly, she didn't really care what it did…as long as it worked.

Dissassembling codelist……one moment please.

"Hurry up!" hissed Selphie, already tempted to bang on the computer monitor.

After what seemed to Selphie to be a ridiculous amount of time, the computer beeped.

Reassembling codelist…..

"Whew."

"One moment please."

"Why, you piece of junk…" hissed Selphie.

Welcome to BioTech!CLIENT LIST

_Active_

_Grant Members_

PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

_Current Designs_

_In process_

_Models in Production_

_Prototypes in Production_

Selphie's gaze stopped there. She was not particularly interested in the client list, as she knew most certainly that BioTech would not list illicit weapons buyers on a relatively public access computer. No, the juicy details would have to be on a main-frame computer, like that one Irvine and Arya would be attempting to gain access to at AmmuCorp. Selphie regretted the situation- it would be easier to simply ask for the information as SeeDs of Balamb Garden, but with recent developments, Balamb Garden could hardly afford to look like as if it was trying to examine other gardens as suspects, and BioTech/AmmuCorp would hardly list illegal clientele without…_prompting_. Selphie sighed.

From now on, it seemed, _all_ things would have to be done the hard way.

Scanning the list, she reached for the mouse to click on PRODUCT DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT: _In process_.

_What item in the development process stage would you like to examine?_

AX318 Standard Ammo Slub

…….No results found.

Selphie frowned. Oh. Slub.  It was difficult to read type when one's vision was backwards. She typed again, leaning farther over the counter, head craned down to read the writing. Her feet dangled precariously as she leaned, threatening to spill her over at any moment.

**AX-318 Standard Ammo Slug.**

….._No results found._

Gritting her teeth, Selphie wracked her brain to remember the re-directional shortcut Arya had taught them.

**Re-route- access Product Design and Development/Models In Production/SearchAll**

_…_

_What item in the production stage would you like to review?_

**AX-318 Standard Ammo Slug.**

Selphie had to pause while typing to pull her skirt back down.

……._AX-318 Standard Ammo Slug………………1GIL per 10 SHELLS_

In all reality, Selphie wasn't surprised. The A31 wasn't particularly remarkable in any aspect- it was a simple, high impact aluminum/steel hybrid designed for basic gun models. The higher, larger-impact slugs would be developed long before any standard slug would be tampered with. Besides, AmmuCorp was the only local ammunitions faction that even processed the slug, and because of that, the item would never be a particularly high-demand item amongst terrorists, though it was very cheap. BioTech would never make an illegal, untested common model, because that model could be easily traced.

So…BioTech hadn't manufactured the poisoned bullets. But the deduction Selphie could make from her discovery was equally disturbing. If BioTech hadn't…who had? What organization could possibly have or afford that sort of technology or skill?

Quickly, Selphie retrieved her disk, waiting impatiently as the system returned to its normal setting. "Come on come on come on!" she urged the computer, tapping the mouse against the pad in her impatience. That guy was going to be back at any moment, and she was pretty certain that her sweet, innocent Moomba Scout routine wasn't going to work when he found her hacking the company database. The screen returned to normal, and Selphie clicked to maximize the solitaire game once again, and couldn't resist matching up the red four with the black five before she started to scoot back.

She slipped the hack-disk into her bra and was just about to slide off of the counter when the doors slid open

"What are you doing?" Bryon looked over the counter.

Selphie yipped, and fell backwards into a tangle of green arms and limbs.

Selphie just smiled up at him from her new vantage point before quickly scrambling to her feet. "Oh, I was just looking at your fish. It's so pretty!"

Byron gave her a funny look, but handed her a slip of paper and a fistful of bills. "Here's the group order. Now when can we expect-"

"Two weeks!" said Selphie quickly, grabbing the money and the slip of paper, waving as she practically ran out of the door.

"You dropped your-" began Bryon, but stopped as the door slammed shut behind the energetic young girl. "Pen." He finished, holding up the terribly flamboyant green writing utensil. Shrugging, he set it on the desk, and reluctantly fell back into his rolling chair. He didn't normally leave people in the foyer, as there were all sorts of possible security breach risks all over the compound, but what harm could one Moomba Scout do?

His eyes eventually wandered back to the computer screen, watching the card patterns fairly buzz on the screen. Although that little interlude had been…_interesting_, to say the least, he now noticed the relative boredom of his work routine all the more.

He glanced over to the fishbowl, to where Meuersault was now sunk to the bottom, the outline of a marble heavy in his scaled gut.

Lucky bastard.

…


	24. Hacking and Happy Hour

A/N: had to split this chapter into two, since didn't like it.

The Homeless Shelter was a small, box-like building with flower trays in the windows, which sported cheap but colorful displays of Gardenias. Another small, tattered apartment building sat directly behind the main housing, the paint peeling and most of the dingy gray shutters holding on by will alone. Children milled in the yard, playing with obviously second-hand bikes and toys, and mothers sat out on the grasses, watching their children, some of them knitting, others smoking barefoot on the lawn or squatting on the concrete steps. A few old men sat in chairs on the porch, wearing the strains of poverty in the smile-barren creases of their eyes They watched the newcomers warily, and even the children stopped their playing for a moment to regard the tall, blonde-haired couple that advanced towards the shelter's main building.

The door creaked as they stepped inside, and a woman at a small desk adjusted her glasses to look up at them. She was a small, stern-looking woman, with peppered hair secured in a tight bun and a double-breasted wool suit that flared into a long, thick skirt with striped ankle-stockings. Her glasses sat on a chain around her neck. Yep, there was Trepe in twenty years, all right, thought Seifer, but kept his thoughts to himself. He was in no hurry to encounter another elbow to the ribs. He had earned one on the way here already for a comment about…hell, he didn't even remember what he said, but it was probably uncalled for.

"Hello," said the woman, setting down her paperwork for the moment. "May I help you?"

"Yes. We're looking for a Ms. Sheri Guarsen, please?"

The woman took off her glasses, which hung in a cord around her neck. "Ms. Guarsen is at work right now, and will remain so the rest of the evening. May I ask what business you have with her?"

"How do you know she's at work?" asked Seifer.

"We make it a point to know where all of our residents are, and as this is work-housing, at least one tenant per unit is required to hold a job. As such, we document pay stubs and work schedules. As you well know, the social services system here previously had quite the reputation for…letting things slip." Replied the woman.

_Or letting _**people**_ slip,_ echoed Quistis silently.

"We also make sure that their residence here is…justified." The woman continued. "We encourage many of our long-term residents to hold jobs, and keep track of their employment."

"So it would be safe to say that Ms. Guarsen has been a longtime resident here?" asked Quistis.

The woman studied her hard, eyes flickering cautiously as they peered into hers. "May I ask what business you have with Ms. Guarsen?"

"We're Se-"

"Reporters," cut in Seifer. "I run a small paper in Balamb called…uh, Fire Cross Publications, and this is my associate." He could see Quistis out of the corner of his eyes mouthing 'Fire Cross', a smirk on her face.

"Erhm…We'd like to feature Ms. Guarsen's story in our paper, maybe gain some publicity for the case. It's come to our knowledge that the local police department hasn't done a very thorough job, and we thought that any press would certainly help."

_Spoken like a true press agent_, _Almasy_, thought Quistis, resisting a smirk.

The woman brightened immediately the minute her comrade of sorts spoke, her eyes fixing on Seifer with a kind of appreciative glimmer Quistis was certain Seifer was used to seeing in women's eyes. "Oh! How wonderful!" exclaimed the woman. "I always say that our department needs as much press as it can get, now more than ever. Those poor children…"

"So, you were there the night her children disappeared?" asked Seifer quickly. Quistis decided to let him field the questions. The woman was more responsive to him anyway, for obvious reasons.

"Well, yes. At the office. Ms. Guarsen works late hours, and by the time she came back, her children were gone."

"She just left them alone there?" asked Quistis, folding her arms.

"What the woman does with her children is her business. I would assume that she got a sitter, however, there was no such statement made in the papers. I believe Ms. Guarsen arrived home just as the perpetrators were leaving."

"There was more than one?" asked Seifer.

"Oh yes, Ms. Guarsen was adamant about that. She said they nearly filled up the room, and stormed her over just as she walked in. You'd really have to ask her yourself."

"Well, Mrs-" Seifer lead, smiling his most charming smile. He certainly knew how to exploit a woman's weakness, thought Quistis wryly.

"_Miss_ Bromejavek, if you please." Said the woman, smiling back.

"_Miss_ Bromejavek, would it be possible to look around Ms. Guarsen's apartment?"

"Well, I don't think-"

"Just for a second," said Seifer quickly. "We just want to get the layout of her apartment so that when we talk to her, we can write a really effective article."

"Well, all right," agreed the woman, after a moment's consideration. "But I should really take only one of you up. I don't want to call too much attention…"

Quistis tried not to roll her eyes. The woman obviously wanted to spend some quality time with one of them, and she was fairly sure it wasn't her. "Fine," said Quistis, putting up her hand. "I'll stay here."

Quistis spent the next fifteen minutes sitting on the steps outside the main building, looking through a severely out-dated issue of _Balamb Girl! Magazine, eyeing the fashion and hair articles with distaste._ What kind of magazine would contribute to the early promiscuity and the self-imposed idiocy of women?

She turned the page, featuring an article that discussed the merits of strawberry flavored lip balm as opposed to the much-coveted 'luscious lime', and interviewed several male test subjects.

_This_ magazine did, apparently. Disgusted, she set the magazine back on the stoop.

"Hi!"

Quistis eyes flickered up to gaze into a large set of blue eyes peeking interestedly up at her. The girl could not have been more than six years old, her curly brown hair tied up in two pig-tails that looked very haphazardly done.

"My name is Anna! I live with here with my dad.."

Quistis smiled as she looked down at the youngster. "Hi, Anna."

In reality, children made her slightly nervous, most likely because her life as a soldier had not exposed her much to the young. The young, in Quistis' mind, were equated with the old, their perceived fragility to be protected, but otherwise, in a non-soldier context, that vulnerability made her nervous…

Possibly, because it reminded her of her own. 

Anna, apparently taking her greeting for an invitation, crawled into the steep steps next to her, and sat spread-eagled on it. "My daddy says when he finds a job we're gonna get a nice house with a swing and live the good life and all that jazz." Clearly the child didn't know what 'all that jazz' was, but just liked the sound of it. "Dad says I'm supposed to wait outside and play with the other kids where Ms. Guarsen can see me till he gets home from work and to not go off the lawn. But I'm not off the lawn, so that's okay. I was playing hopscotch before. I got four back jumps in a row!"

"That certainly sounds good," agreed Quistis, tuning to face the little girl. This girl was not at all like she was at that age- even at seven, Quistis could remember trying to organize things around her, and being very quiet around strangers. This child certainly didn't seem afraid of them.

"What's your name?"

"Quistis."

"That's a pretty name." The girl said, shaking her head from side to side so that the curls brushed against her cheeks. "My daddy did my hair today." The little girl had taken to swinging her legs on the step so violent a pace that Quistis was surprised the girl hadn't launched herself across the yard.

"I figured," said Quistis, smiling. "It's very pretty."

The girl looked up again. "Where do you live? Do you have a puppy or a kitty or a fish or a Moomba? I like animals. Daddy says when we get the house maybe we can get a dog, too."

Quistis had to think on those. "I have a big dog, but I didn't give him a name yet. I live in a really big house with lots of other people." Well, _technically_, she had a dog, and Garden was a big place with a lot of people in it. It wasn't exactly a lie.

The little girl climbed to her feet. "Hey! You wanna play hopscotch?"

Quistis shrugged. Why not? Any activity that made her look less like a suspicious interloper was a good activity. "All right. How do you play?"

Anna's eyes grew wide. "You dunno how to play hopscotch?" she reapeated, as if it were a federal offense.

"Nope." Replied Quistis. She had never had much a childhood, as far back as she could remember, but shouldn't she know how to play hopscotch? Hadn't her foster family ever taught her?

Somehow, she doubted it.

"Okay," said Anna, pointing to a series of squares sloppily drawn with pink sidewalk chalk, each square with a scraggly letter drawn on it up to eight. "You throw a stone, like this…on the first square, then ya gotta jump on every square but that one. Watch." Demonstrating, the little girl proceeded to throw the stone and hop the squares in a dainty fashion. "And we're playing front-back, so you switch off going forwards and backwards. You miss a turn if your stone lands on a line, or you fall over, or if you have cooties." She grinned. "I made up the last one, but don't worry, it's just for boys."

Quistis laughed. "Okay."

Anna handed her the stone, a smooth, well-worn obsidian. It was obviously a treasured keepsake. She threw the stone onto the square, and hobbling a bit, she managed to get to the end of the squares feeling only faintly ridiculous.

"You're not very good at this, you know," observed Anna.

"You're right," she agreed, handing the girl the stone.

"Where are your parents?" asked the little girl, hopping backwards like a pro.

Quistis couldn't remember asking this many questions, even when she specialized in interrogation her third year. "I don't have parents."

"Oh." Said the little girl, sobering up a little as she reached up to solemnly pat the older woman's arm and hand her the stone. "That's okay. My mommy isn't alive, either. But daddy says we can still meet in dreams. Don't you think so?"

Quistis smiled. It was apparent that the little girl was happy living with her father, despite the circumstances.

Anna looked up. "Who was that guy with you? Is he your boyfriend?"

She chuckled a little. "No, he's not my boyfriend." Seifer as her _boyfriend_? The concept seemed otherworldly.

"Oh. Is he your husband?"

Even more ridiculous. She chuckled. "No, he isn't."

"Why aren't you married?"

Quistis sighed. It was like talking to Selphie. "I don't know."

"Is he your lover, then?"

Quistis nearly tripped over her feet. "Should you even _know_ words like that?" asked Quistis, startled. She really wished that Seifer would come back soon from his room tour with the old biddy. She was beginning to feel like she was back in the D-district prison's interrogation room.

The girl was undeterred. "Why not? Daddy says a lover is someone who gives you lots of hugs."

_That's one way of putting it_, thought Quistis. "You're too young to understand," she replied, spouting the words that she had always hated hearing as a child, much to her dismay.

"Nuh-uh. I understand lots of stuff!" exclaimed Anna, puffing out her chest. "Aren't you romanfrically infracted to him?"

Quistis just shook her head, smiling.

"Too bad! He's cute!"

Quistis had to laugh as she hopped. Seifer Almasy, the bane of all women, ages 7-60.

But the little question machine evidently wasn't done yet. "Why are you here? Did you lose your house too?"

"No," replied Quistis. "We're here because we want to help someone find their kids."

"Oh, you mean Sinny and Gwenny, huh? Do you think they'll come back?" She skipped a little, then stopped mid-square. "The men were going to take me, too, but I guess their boss didn't want me to come. The guys said it would be our little secret. But you won't tell, will you?"

Quistis was frowning. "What men? What did they tell you?" she asked quickly.

The little girl looked up suddenly. "Oh! Daddy's here! Bye, Quistis!" With that, she waved, rocketing into the yard where an older man greeted her, arms opened. Quistis smiled. It was nice to see a happy family, even one immersed in such troubled times.

"You've taken up hopscotch, I see." Came a rumble behind her.

She whirled, hands on hips, cheeks flushing as her gaze came in contact with Seifer's, who was standing with his arms folded, smirking like the devil himself.  "You were watching me?"

"Yup!" he grinned, folding his arms.

Oh, _wonderful_. "How long?"

His smiled widened. "Long enough to see you really suck." He laughed out loud at her obvious flush of embarrassment. Really, he hadn't been there more than five minutes, but it had been interesting to see his former Instructor, hair in a braid down her back, laughing and trying to stay within the lines of a child's game. He had never seen a playful side of Quistis Trepe before, but found it fascinating, the heterogeneous mixture of soldier and woman that wound through her veins. The soldier was present often, the woman little, and he found glimpses of it to be as captivating as flashes of flesh.

Why, he wondered, was he getting so wound up watching his former Instructor suck at hopscotch?

She was an enigma, he decided, and he hadn't gotten laid for months. That was it. An enigma that, currently, looked like she badly wanted to wipe the smirk off of his face.

"I wonder what the rest of Garden would think about Quistis Trepe losing at hopscotch to a six year old?" he mused, deliberately provoking her further as they began to walk. "How ever would you keep up your dominatrix image?"

She shook her head, still an appealing shade of red. "**Mr**. Almasy-"

"You get embarrassed too easily, Trepe." He remarked, still smirking.

"I do not!" she exclaimed, trailing after him, hands on her hips and even more flustered than before. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

"Oh, really?" he asked, turning around and folding his arms across his chest. Quistis scowled, not liking the mischievous way he was smiling.

"Really. I _never_ get embarrassed, in fact." She stated, folding her arms and willing the hot flush to run out of her cheeks. She wasn't blushing, damnit. Quistis Trepe did not _blush_.

His smirk grew. "Hm. We'll see." He started to walk away, and Quistis felt herself growing uneasy with every step. What did he mean by that?

She looked behind her, searching for the little girl she had just spoken with and hoping to speak with her one last time, but the little girl had disappeared. She would have to tell Seifer about her conversation with her…perhaps he could make more sense of it than she had.

She turned back to catch up with Seifer, who was now entering the more crowded part of Balamb's streets. The town had really come alive in the last two years, expanding blocks beyond its old limits. "Where are we going?" she asked. "Seifer?"

He turned to her, waiting until she caught up. "Seifer, mind telling me where we're going?"

"Ms. Guarsen works at Déjà vu. Her shift begins at 8, so we've got some time to kill." He told her.

"Déjà vu? Is that a bar?" asked Quistis.

"You might say that." Replied Seifer evasively.

"Did you find all this out from your new friend?" she asked, amused.

His smile was priceless. "Why yes, as a matter of fact, I did. She gave me a Class A tour and was _very_ helpful."

"Only because she was looking for an opportunity of her own." Replied Quistis slyly.

"I feel so _used_." Replied Seifer, placing a hand over his chest, making her laugh. His smile grew.

"Well, if things don't turn out with Miss Bromejavek, you can always consider Anna."

"Who's Anna?"

"The seven year old. I have it on good authority that she thinks you're 'cute'."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "It's nice to know I still have options." He mused, watching her smile again out of the corner of his eye.

_What about you, Trepe? Are you an option?_

Irvine Kinneas hated office buildings. The geometrically confining traps were worse than a three-day stake-out on the Trabian planes during a full-out blizzard, as far as the expert marksman was concerned.

And office buildings didn't get worse than this one. The Ammucorp factory was a thirteen-story production center, with the factory floors one through five, including an extensive basement. Six through thirteen were office buildings, storage floors, and other random cubicle spaces. The records office just happened to be on the 13th floor.

Office Buildings- the modern labyrinths, a maze for men. Somewhere, rats were laughing at men in suits, he was sure of it.

Arya glanced over at him, arms folded over her chest as the glass elevator propelled smoothly towards the eighteenth floor. Irvine was staring at the buttons, watching the progression of orange neon as the box climbed skyward rather than the rapidly diminishing landscape. She was, admittedly, a little nervous about this mission- it was one of her first as SeeD. Although she had not exactly passed the physical part of the examination with flying colors, she did pass, and her tech skills more than made up for her lack of prowess with a weapon.

"Something wrong, Irvine?" she asked, finally.

"Nope. Not a thing, darlin'." He replied, sweating.

It simply wouldn't do for word to get around that Irvine Kinneas hated heights. And spiders. Irvine absolutely hated the crawly, insidious-looking insects, and routinely made Selphie kill them. He held her to secrecy, threatening that if she ever told he'd make it common knowledge that she still slept with her stuffed bear, Boo. It was blackmail, true, but it was necessary blackmail. He couldn't have his reputation as a fearless sharp-shooter marred by fear of heights and four-legged pests, after all.

He often surprised himself at how easily he overcame his fears when placed in danger- it was hard-wired into him to ignore all but the mission objectives when it was called for. During those times his heart beat slow and steady from rooftops as he picked off other snipers, and his hands remained as still as a surgeon's when navigating infested caves. But, for the moment, he wasn't feeling particularly threatened. Just nauseated.

"Irvine?" Arya was standing in front of him, her foot in the elevator door and her hand waving in his face. "Irvine, we're here."

Irvine opened his eyes. He hadn't even been aware that he'd been squeezing them shut.

The office building was immaculate, with rich wood walls and a fountain featuring a marble woman with a jade pitcher that trickled clear water. Bathroom propagators, Zell called them. Irvine stood as far away from the windows as possible.

"May ah help y'all with somethin'?" The receptionist looked up as soon as they entered, a friendly smile plastered on her heavily decorated face. Bright blue eyeliner hung heavy on each sagging eyelid, and her red lipstick was just three shades under blinding. She looked, for all the world, like a sitting neon sign. Little phone-shaped earrings swung from her ears. Irvine grew mesmerized with them for a moment before Arya nudged him.

"Yeah. My associate and myself are here on the behalf of Comp. Tech services. My name is Drake Worshen, and this here is Lola Parks." Irvine had to fight with every muscle in his face to keep it from breaking out into an inappropriate smile.

"Pleased t' meetcha, Mr. Worshen."

"Oh, the pleasure's all mine." Replied Irvine, eyes already scanning the place for possible exits, number of employees, and differently numbered rooms, almost unconsciously laying out several escape routes and simultaneous areas of interest.

   
The woman smiled, continuing, "Mah goodness, y'know you look sorta like that Irkle cowboy fellow from the second Sorceress War?"

   
Irvine grinned. "Oh, yeah, I get that a lot. It's quite an honor, really, the man really is a testament to-"

Arya cleared her throat.

"Well, anyway, Ms.-" he consulted the tag on her ample bosom. "Ms. Feibre, if you'll show us where the main terminal is, we'll get to work."

Ms. Feibre gave them a puzzled frown. "Y'all were in here just last week dinkin' around with that dang big electronic box. Ah'm afraid I don't have an appointment for y'all t' come in today."

Arya sized up the situation. If she was a guessing girl, and she had to be in her line of work, she'd wager to guess that Ms. Feibre didn't know a single thing about the 'dang big electronic box', and most likely considered it an upgraded file cabinet with too many fancy buttons. If that was true, then they were in better luck than they realized. The company cards that Selphie had duplicated were for a small technology-based company called Comp Tech that frequently ran scans and services for larger corporations. She was confident that their identity and their presence wouldn't be questioned.

As long as they didn't scan their cards.

Arya smiled at the woman. "Well, we're here to do a complimentary RAM spec, actually," she said, hoping her smile and her excuse both seemed genuine. "It's something we like to do for all of our larger clients, just to make your systems are running at their optimal performance."

"What'sa ramspec?" asked the secretary, clearly puzzled.

_Piece of cake, _thought Arya, _She's nearly computer-illiterate_."Well, just think of that master computer back there like a big brain. The more information you plug into that brain on a day-to-day basis, the more trouble your big computer back there has remembering it. A customary RAM check just makes sure the 'brain' back there is big enough for day to day data additions and storage uses."

"Oh," said the woman, looking as if Ayra had just spouted off an astro-physics textbook summary.

"If you'll just show us to the room, ma'am, we'll be happy to get started and out of your hair in a few moments."

Ms. Feibre looked nervous. "Well, Mr. Jamiston isn't in today-"

Irvine and Arya exchanged a look. Even better, if the company president couldn't be phoned.

Irvine gave the woman his most charming smile. "Well, I'm sure he wouldn't mind some complimentary upgrades."

"Well…uh, ah suppose not. Well if y'all just wanna sign in that sheet there, and leave your cards t'be recorded, I'm sure it'll be fahn with Mr. Jamiston. C'mon back." Shoving back from her desk, the woman led the way in the marked beat of her bright pink stiletto heels.

Irvine and Arya exchanged another glance as they followed behind her. "Recording means scanning, doesn't it?" he muttered.

Arya nodded.

"Well, _shit_." He muttered.

"Well, here we are," exclaimed Ms. Feibre. "Now if you'll all just sign in over there by them company blackboard software thingamajigs, we'll be all set. Company likes t' keep a record of all th' mechanics workin' on our date-base, that way we kin keep tabs o' all the people that got our info."

Irvine nearly smirked at that. The only reason AmmuCorp kept a record of all the computer mechanics that worked on the data machines was to have a list of suspects if a security breach ever broke out.  The people on that list, he was sure, would be taken care of in very interesting ways.

This mission, by its very nature, was extremely dangerous, and not only because they were performing a completely illegal process. AmmuCorp had money and connections, some of which were far from clean. Trespassers and competition to the large company almost always disappeared….very quickly and very cleanly. Irvine doubted that it was pure coincidence that the company president also had a considerable amount of money invested in a cement mixing company.

"Is that a Model AP-2000?" asked Arya, eyes shining.

"I guess." Said the woman. "I don't pay no never mind to what Mr. Jamiston sticks in this lil' ol room. I'm afraid it quite surpasses me."

Irvine glanced around the relatively large room, thumbs hooked in his pockets. The room was an almost pulsating white with a single very large machine on the right wall, which hummed and blinked and did other sorts of computer things that Irvine assumed were normal. Irvine cared for technology almost as much as he did for office building- the structures and ideas behind them were too complex, too fickle, too prone to change and unreliability. Irvine Kinneas liked to keep things simple, although the gunslinger was far from simple-minded. His emotions ran deep for those things he considered important- his friends, his girl, and his home, but little else of the military show attracted him. The glitz and glamour of big cities and politics simply didn't interest Irvine- it was all flash and no substance, no matter how alluring that glitz happened to be. If things weren't simple, then they weren't anything.

And this computer seemed to be as much of _nothing_ as anything could get.

"Oh, Ms. Feibre," said Arya, after giving Irvine a wink. "I'm terribly sorry, but could you show me where the little girl's room is up here?"

Ms. Feibre nodded. "Why shore, honey, y'all kin just sahn in when yuh git back then."

Arya looked over her shoulder at him as the plump woman led her down the hall, mouthing 'hurry up' at him before turning around. The woman might not be exactly computer literate, but she was sure to notice the significance of 'Security Code Override'.

Irvine turned back to the machine, pulling the disk from his pocket.

Oh, _shit_.

There had to be a million drives that he could possibly stick this stupid disk in, and about a million flashing lights that meant god knew what. This was a supercomputer?

This was a pain in the _ass_.

Irvine looked around, checking for any security cameras. Finding several, he turned back to the machine and tried to look like he knew what the hell he was doing.

"Eenie, meenie, miney…" he muttered, before shoving the disk into one correctly shaped slot. A screen to the right of it, under which there was a small keyboard and headphone set, suddenly switched on. An oddly feminine electronic voice made him jump.

"Ammucorp 2000, terminal 1059: Please enter your user name and passcode."

Irvine found it highly ironic that the only person that was actually trained to do this stupid thing was trying to take the secretary on a wild goose chase through the halls. Irvine knew computer basics- he'd taken the same basic hacking class at Galbadia that everyone was now required to take at Balamb. Of course, he'd spent the entire class trying to get the attention of the pretty girl sitting next to him, and hadn't paid attention to most of the actual procedure.

Well, that class was successful in _one_ avenue, anyway.

Irvine geared his mind back towards the computer. User name…..

Hmm…CompTech. That one was easy.

_Passcode__?__ Wasn't the little disk supposed to take care of a passcode prompt?_

Irvine blanched and hit the enter key, hoping that the computer would forget that it wanted the passcode in the first place.

_Passcode__ incorrect.__ Please type in the passcode again._

Dang……the electronic bitch remembered. Irvine frowned.

How did one exit the primary screen again? This super computer certainly wasn't like the tiny desktops they'd trained on at the academy.

"Son 'f a bitch." Muttered Irvine. It didn't take that long to go to the bathroom. They'd be back any second…Irvine quickly pressed as many keys as he could and hit enter, hoping the string of lines would confuse the stupid thing long enough to get past the primary screen.

_The password: **dfjks;afjdskl;afjdklf;jdsklfdfnne4wimofjrekg;jadrklf;dsjklfglhr44uirhjreklfndjkndk.ndsm.fndm..fndkjslk** is invalid. _

_"Please enter a different passcode."_

Irvine glanced behind him, impatiently drumming his fingers on the keyboard. Oh, hell….

Password: **CompTech**….

_Your password is incorrect_, stated the machine, almost accusingly.

"Shhhhh…." Muttered Irvine, hoping the other employees in their cubicles couldn't hear his current argument with the machine.

The computer, however, wasn't done. "Security breach. The system will lock down in five…four……three….."

Frantic, Irvine kicked the machine as hard as he could. Drives rattled, and a new flurry of blinking lights flew onto the machine's silver face.

"Welcome to Ammucorp 2000, terminal 1059: Please enter your user name and passcode."

He was right back where he started.

Just then, as if matters couldn't get worse, Arya appeared from around the corner, the older woman in tow. Arya shared an impatient look with him as she walked up, arms crossed.

"Are you finished yet, Drake?" asked Arya.

"Just a couple of last minute procedures, and we'll be all set." Replied Irvine smoothly. "Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. When we install the, er, LAMB prototype, there's a kind of electromagnetic spectrum that radiates from the chips, and its very dangerous to those who haven't had previous exposure."

"Oh, my." Said the woman, looking alarmed. "That does sound dangerous. I'm just going to call up our Tech Services here and tell them that someone's come up." The door closed behind her.

Irvine sighed. "Great. How long before somebody comes up t' check on us?"

Arya shrugged. "I'd say we have about five minutes. How far along are we?"

Irvine scratched the back of his head. "Well, I put the disk in."

"And-" prodded Arya, growing impatient.

"And, I put the frickin' disk in! That thing's a she-devil!" he exclaimed.

Arya just sighed. "All right." She muttered, stepping up to the keyboard and cracking her knuckles. "Let's see." She reached in her pocket, pulling on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that made her look like a big bug. The thick lenses magnified her warm brown eyes into bulbous, glassy spheres. She called them her hacking goggles. Irvine resisted the urge to spray her with insecticide every time she put them on.

She tapped her chin for a moment, then proceeded to type in a three-line number code at lightening speed.

**_Run/AC…10459856BAVC-CCC-datacrack: KNOCK KNOCK._**

The primary screen vanished, and in its place, a new, black screen came into view.

_KNOCK, KNOCK._

Arya grinned. It was her one of her favorite codes, a virus that wound itself through the mainframe and opened every single data door the computer had to offer. Not only that, but it converted quickly into her special script. She typed in twenty five mores lines of code, each number and letter committed to memory.

_Who's there?_ She typed back.

_Who do you want it to be?_  Responded the computer. The computer had been effectively opened, kneeling before her like a Tech Goddess. Arya smirked. As well it should.

Irvine watched, in awe, as the young woman quickly knelt down, retrieved the initial boot disk, then motioned for the second one. Irvine pulled it from his coat pocket, and took the one in her hand. Arya was a completely different woman when hacking. Her brown hair spilled around her face in disarray, eyes sparkling with a mischievous gleam.

Irvine blinked. Damn…the girl was something when she was switched on around technology.

Arya stood back up, squinting at the screen. "Irvine, watch the door." The cowboy obeyed perching near the door to watch the footsteps shuffle by, and listen for any approaching techs.

**Run/AC/COPYCAT.**

_Who will you bring to the fair?_

"Model AP-2000." Mused Irvine, studying the computer label. "Is that some sort of acronym for piece of shit?"

**ALLFILE/DATACUST.LISTDATA.COPYALL6-6-6.011001000**.

_Who else will come along?_

**UPLOAD: SURIVCOUNT5X5TRABIANHORSE**

The Trabian Horse, was, hands down, Arya's favorite virus. It was a nasty little piece of data, one that was both memory resistant and polymorphic. She liked to consider it her little baby, but to the computers it infected, it was anything but. The virus activated itself only once, but after that, the computer itself could be controlled from a remote location. In layman's terms, if everything went as planned, B. Garden would have a constant access line to AmmuCorps records. A line that, if traced, would lead to some remote and completely random location in the Salt Lake Flats. It was flawless.

Wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, Arya hit the enter key.

_SCAN IN PROCESS….._

_COPYING DATA……._

_DATA PROCESS STOPPED: FIREWALL ENCOUNTERED** ACCESS DENIED.**_

Arya just smiled. "Why is it they always try to play hard to get?" Her fingers flew against the keys once more.

Irvine listened at the door. "I think someone's comin' Ar, and I think they're beginning to suspect that there's no such thing as free system upgrades."

Sure enough, the door was buzzed. "Erhm, excuse me? I just called Mr. Jamiston, and he said he didn't order no extra LAMBS or whateva."

"See if you can go out and stall them," she said, without looking up.

**UPLOAD: SURIVCOUNT5X5LIST/BALLOFYARN**.

Ball of Yarn was another favorite homemade recipe of Arya's- one that distracted the computer's security software by disguising itself as a virus and creating a sister program that would attach to her Trabian Horse virus, allowing the program in as RAM software. She procured the chips from her sweater vest pocket, opening the memory drives and sliding in the new cartridges. The computer would run faster, that was for sure, but only because she was installing RAM as part of her new and improved slaver software.

She really should market it. _Slaver software: Controlling powerful companies from the comfort of your own home!_ Arya smiled to herself, feeling positively wicked and loving it. That was the beauty of being a mousy librarian. Nobody ever suspected a hacker behind the glasses.

**UPLOAD: SURIVCOUNT5X5TRABIANHORSESURIVCOUNT5X5LIST/BALLOFYARN**

ONE MOMENT PLEASE…

Arya tapped her fingers against the keys, a nervous habit. Absently, she wondered what methods Irvine was using to distract the liberally-painted secretary outside.

"Just a few more minutes." She muttered to herself, tapping her foot on the floor. Her eyes lit in a smile as she thought of a new idea, fingers once again lighting to action on the small press pad keyboard.

A few minutes later, the computer finally issued a final-sounding hum, and spit the disk into her waiting palm. Arya smiled, bent over to hide her actions from the camera as she deftly tucked the disk into her bra, blowing a little kiss at the cameras. It was no matter, in a few minutes they would erase, anyway, eating their own empty feeds to fill space time. It would be as if Drake and Lola had never visited Ammucorp headquarters at all.

Irvine snapped around as the doors opened, evidently interrupting a heated discussion between the gunslinger and the secretary. "All set! Your systems are all ready to run!"

The secretary's cheeks were pink. "Then y'all won't mind scannin' yer cards, now will you?" Two security guards appeared behind her.

Irvine looked ready to draw. Arya just smiled. "Not at all." Snatching Irvine's card from his pocket and walking calmly up to the electronic blackboard, she quickly swiped her card, watching with satisfaction as the green light flickered.

**"Welcome, Lola Parks." **

**"Welcome Drake Worshen."**

Irvine looked baffled, but he concealed it well.

The woman looked somewhat less annoyed, but still pursed her lips. "Well, ah'm sorry t' have troubled ya then, boys." She said to the two security guards before turning back to Arya and Irvine. "Y'all gotta understand Mr. Jamiston's concern. This is a big company, after all…lots of interests in stake should anything go wrong."

"Of course." Irvine smiled politely.

_Plenty of illegal interests at stake you mean_, he thought to himself.

Adrenaline rushing through their veins, the two quickly exited into the elevator. Irvine stared at the numbers once again.

"Got it?" he asked.

Arya smiled and patted her vest. "That, and more."

"You're my hero." He said, sighing as he leaned against the metal rail.

His comrade just blushed, shaking her head.

"How'd you do it?" he asked, finally.

"Do what?" said Arya, smirking.

He glanced over at her. "Y'know what."

Arya shrugged. "Oh, a little kilobyte nip and tuck here and there. I could have swiped my Garden Library card through." She paused, taking in Irvine's somewhat disheveled appearance. There was a red welt across his cheek, and was that neon lipstick smudged across his mouth? She put her hand on her hip. "How exactly did you distract that Ms. Feibre, anyway, Mr. Kinneas?"

He shuddered. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I take it your impromptu distraction didn't go well?" she teased, gesturing to the red welt on the side of his face.

"Like a load o' bricks." He muttered. "Selphie asks, I fell down th' stairs."

Arya just rolled her eyes, stifling a giggle.

Quistis lifted up the sleeve of her sweater to consult her watch. "Well, how do you plan on wasting the next...five hours?" she asked, gazing around the cobblestone square. Balamb City certainly had changed in the past two years. The town had been widely expanded, and new bars, hotels, and restaurants had followed to cater to the increased residential sections.

She still remembered the day when all the city had to offer was a car rental shop, a junk shop, a basic item store, and a hotel, along with a few side streets which boasted an old bar or two.

She wasn't sure what to think of the new Balamb. It was bigger, more grandesque, a quicker beat in the veins of its city streets, but it seemed distant somehow, as if the once quiet town had lost its innocence. Were all things destined to be this way, someday?

Seifer glanced over at her, arms folded across his chest as he watched the residents of Balamb mill around like ants- completely stupid creatures with no real direction in mind. For the last fifteen minutes Quistis had been relatively quiet, almost sad. But then, there had always been an air of sadness around Trepe, a presence that clung to her eyes the way sagging cobwebs clung to doorways. It was faint attendance, but never one that was substantial enough to pin down.

"Hungry?"

She considered, eyes flickering up to meet his. "I could eat something."

"Come on, then. I know a place."

Seifer's 'place' happened to be a tavern tucked on the outskirts of town, a half hour walk from the center of Balamb's cobblestone circle. Quistis watched the passersby, the way they stared at Seifer, some of them doing double-takes as they passed. Seifer was not exactly an average citizen, tall, blonde, and scarred, and Quistis had the uneasy feeling that they were attracting more attention than was optimal.

"Joe's Tavern?" questioned Quistis, reading the hand-painted sign tacked to the front. Frankly, Quistis was surprised the thing was still standing. As if in response, a gust of wind swirled up, and an entire stack of clay shingles spilled down onto the sidewalk below, smashing into a million red pieces. What prize real estate.

Seifer shrugged. "They have good fish, and nobody's going to notice us here." He regarded her wary expression with amusement. "What, isn't this place good enough for you?"

She glared at him. "What are you insinuating?"

"Nothing. I'm sure the Trepies take you out to all your fancy restaurants, wine and dine and sixty-"

She rolled her eyes. "Trepies, sure, whatever. Do they have salads?" she asked, reluctantly following Seifer into the bar.

   
Seifer chuckled. "Not likely, _princess_."

"You call me princess again, and you'll be spitting out teeth."

Well, that one certainly got her hackles raised. Seifer made a mental note on that particular button- namely, to press it often. It was always refreshing to discover new ways to irk Trepe. Even now, he wasn't sure why he got a kick out of firing her blood. He suspected it traced back to their childhood.

The bar inside was just as he remembered it- a mess of tattooed skin, smoke, and scars. Amber-colored lamps were dimly lit, and half the glass mirrors were shattered. He'd nearly had his throat slit by one of those shards, at one time. He'd forgotten what the argument was about.

_Good times, this bar._

No one really acknowledged his presence, but that was to say nothing of his female counterpart. Quite a few male eyes took notice of the female newcomer, and were met with an icy stare in return.  Seifer just chuckled. He didn't need to worry about Trepe, even in a place like this. She could dispose of her unwanted suitors without his help.

"What do you want to drink?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Water will be fine."

He sat up at the bar, and ordered two waters, since he knew he'd practically have to get a funnel and a harness to get any liquor past Trepe's lips. The bartender gave him a funny look about the water and said they didn't have any, so he ordered a seltzer water instead. Then, so as not to appear like a complete pansy, he ordered a beer. Ordering water was a good way to get yourself killed in a place like this.

"What kind of bar doesn't serve water?" she asked.

He shrugged.

He wondered what Quistis Trepe would look like drunk, if perhaps she'd lose a little of her stick in the ass mentality and loosen up. Not likely. She'd probably reorganize her filing systems by reverse numerical order, just to be dangerous.

Quistis looked around the bar, leaning over the counter. "Isn't there a menu?"

Seifer turned, examining the bar patrons and almost unconsciously sizing them up, catching the eye of one particularly drunk man that had been eyeing both he and Quistis since their entrance. His gaze swam with liquor, and Seifer returned the glare, allowing his lips to curl back in a small sneer, the lapel of his black trench coat laid open to reveal just the smallest hint of Hyperion's blade.

Watching. Posing. It was a behavior accumulated throughout his lifetime, and a necessary one for a person that had spent most of their life on the streets, whether that presence was chosen or exiled. Seifer had learned the hard way when to decline a fight, particularly in the last two years of his life. Those 'lessons' had cost several bruised ribs, a broken jaw, and several cuts and bruises stretched out over several different incidents for several different reasons.

Seifer, having spent most of his life trying to start a losing fight with the world at large, was now largely content to avoid looking for them. Fighting them once _found_, however, was a different matter.

Whether genetic or not, battle was in his blood, coupled with the constant presence of a wounded pride. It was a dangerous combination- one that had earned him the scar that now graced his forehead, which had now faded to a dark pink instead of a glaring red. He'd left the scar at the time because he believed it marked he and Squall as equals. Now, it was simply a constant reminder of all that he was...and everything that he would never be.

The man looked at him, held his gaze a moment, then looked away. Seifer let the fold of his trench coat fall back to his waist and turned back to Quistis.

Satisfied, Seifer turned back to Quistis, just as his drink arrived. Quistis was asking him something, but he couldn't hear it above the clamber of mugs and voices.

"What?" he had to shout a little above the noise.

"I _said_, isn't there a menu?"

At that, he chuckled. "It's a _bar_, Quis. All you're gonna get in the way of food is beer or meat on a stick."

Quistis rolled her eyes turning away from the bar only to see a man with more tattoos on his meaty arms than she likely had skin on her body. "So nice that you've brought us to a place of such culture." She pointed to his beer. "I can't believe you're drinking on a mission!"

"This isn't a fucking mission, Trepe, this is us doing free-lance investigating. There's no protocol, unless you make it up."

"Well, I still don't think it's wise."

Seifer rolled his eyes and took another drink. "Instructions for having fun: take stick out of ass and relax."

Quistis just glared at him, putting her elbows up on the bar. "Clever."

"I aim to please." He drained half of his beer, just to piss her off.

Quistis just turned around and muttered to herself.

"So, about this supposed-" he gestured. "Ability of yours not to get embarrassed…"

She glared at him. "I _don't_ get embarrassed."

But he was already humming, an off-key noise.

One that got louder by the moment.

"Seifer…" she warned, leaning forward.

But he only glanced at her, grinned, and hummed louder. "What are you doing?" she hissed.

He glanced over at her, and winked. The wink would have turned a normal woman's knees to jelly. It simply made Quistis Trepe suspicious.

Her suspicions were confirmed, when, in the next moment, he opened his mouth.

"I really do appreciate the fact you're sittin' here," he began, loudly, to sing a song she had heard only sung once by Trabian sailors in the slummiest of Esthar bars while on an undercover mission.  A few patrons walked by, glancing over their shoulders.

He wouldn't _dare_…

Wouldn't _dare_? This was _Almasy_. He _would_ and routinely _did_.

"Your voice sounds wonderful…but your face don't look too clear-" he was practically shouting now, and a few of the waitresses had stopped, trays balanced on their hips, to watch, amused and enthralled by the green-eyed young man whose voice, despite the fact that he was singing an old bar tune, was not half bad.

Quistis felt a distinct blush bloom in her cheeks, but she fought it. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

"I just bought a mattress, big enough for me and you-" He winked again, and it took all of her will power not to choke him.

A few of the other bar patrons, to her horror, had started to sing along. Toothless old men and women with more hair below their neck than Quistis had on her head began to warble along- clearly the old tune was a favorite. She looked around, trying to avoid eyes, mostly folding her arms and staring at the floor. He wasn't even singing most of the right words, but nobody else around him seemed to notice.

"So, why don't we get drunk, and screw?" He was singing at the top of his lungs now, laughter creeping into his voice and Quistis Trepe swore she never endorsed senseless violence so much as she did in that moment. The man was infuriating, agonizing, annoying, maddening-

…and coincidentally, had a decent singing voice.

_Never mind that_, she screamed internally. She was going to kill him, she was going to kill him right here in this bar and consequences be damned…Everyone was staring at them! Wasn't he embarrassed?

Apparently not. Quistis had the feeling that Seifer could walk naked through a crowd with cheeks as unmarred as the first snowfall of the year.

He looked right at her. "They say you are an Ice Queen, honey," Her left fist was twitching, just itching to belt him in the eye. The whole bar seemed to be singing at her- drunk, hairy men with stines raised to salute the proposed lewd activity with vigor.

"Those aren't even the right words!" she shouted, knowing that her face was already red, but she didn't care. His lips were curved in victory, and she determined immediately that she was going to wipe that smirk off if it was the last thing she ever did.

Seifer was trying hard not to laugh. The rest of the bar seemed to have taken over his song, and Quistis' face was as red as a Ruby Dragon's breath. Come to think of it, her eyes seemed to be lit with the same fire…

"So why don't, we get drunk and-"

Before he could finish the rest of his sentence, a helping of seltzer water slapped him in the face. Water dripped down his chin, and he looked up to see Quistis stalking away, huffing into a dark corner of the room to flounce into a booth. The little minx had thrown her water at him.

Chuckling and wiping the water from his lips, he bowed to his new audience, who clapped and cheered or an encore. Still laughing, he stalked after her. He hadn't had this much fun in years.

She was seated in a booth far to the back when he caught up to her, wringing her hands. The irate blush was fading from her cheeks, leaving her looking, well…irate. "So much for not attracting attention, Almasy."

He laughed. "So much for not being _embarrassed_, Trepe."

_If looks could kill…_

"Don't you have any sense of decency at all?" she asked, clearly exasperated.

"Nope," he grinned, leaning back in the booth. She shook her head, muttering.

A waiter arrived, his wrist bigger than Seifer's neck. Seifer instantly recognized him as Joe, the owner. In his meaty little hands he held a tiny blue pen and a pad...well, tiny by comparison. "Hey, Seifer man, haven't seen you around for awhile. I can expect you won't be startin' any fights today, eh?"

Seifer just shrugged, which made the large man chuckle.

"All right. What'll it be?"

Quistis glanced over at Seifer. He was a bar regular?  Why didn't that surprise her?

Seifer considered. "The special. Quistis?" he asked, sweetly.

She gave him a decent glare before looking up at Joe. "Fine. What's the _least_ bloody thing on the menu_?" Or the thing that's been dead the longe_st, she thought to herself.

Joe shrugged his large shoulders. "I dunno. Prob'ly the special."

"What's in the special?" she inquired.

"Geez, I dunno, lady, I don't kill it 'er cook it, I just take the orders."

"It is _dead_, isn't it?" she queried.

Joe rolled his eyes.

"Fine." Sighed Quistis. "I'll have the special."

Joe scribbled something and walked away.

Seifer grinned over at Quistis, leaning up against the bar with his elbows. "How's that stick coming?"

"Fuck you."

"So you _did_ like the song…."

She glared at him. "You asshole."

"My ears are burning." he feigned distress.

"Somehow, I sincerely doubt that," she said, rolling her eyes as a piece of hair fell across her eyes appealingly. Damn, she was sexy when she was sarcastic…which, when she was around him, just happened to be most of the time.

"Been hanging around Xu lately?" he asked, amused.

"No, although I'm beginning to see the benefits of strangling you." She muttered.

His grin widened as he took another sip.

She sipped what remained of her water, and made a face. "Even this water tastes like beer." She rested her chin on her elbow, and glared at him.

"Want some?" he asked, holding his glass out to her. "I hear alcohol dislodges that stick."

Quistis curled up her lip. "I'll pass. And I don't know why you misconstrue being uptight with maturity." She set down her own glass. "Just because the women you dated in the past were most likely all press-on nail and no brain-"

"What makes you think that?" he asked. Nevermind that it was mostly _true_…

"The fact that you'd think that anything in excess of the necessary anatomy and the ability to follow simple directions would be a waste." She replied.

"Oh, really?" he sneered. "And when's the last time _you_ went on a date?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I really don't see how that even remotely relates with-"

"Ha! That's _exactly_ my point! You've probably got this knight in shining armor ideal pinned up in your mind like a posterboy, on some fucking impossible whim..." He smirked at her. "I'll bet you've never been on a date in your _life_, Trepe."

She wasn't sure what hurt more, that he would think that of her…or that he was right.

"Just because I don't go around screwing everything with a passing interest-"

He shook his head. "This isn't about sex. It's about giving the other sex a prayer in hell."

She recoiled, glaring. "I have standards," she replied, temper flaring.

He laughed, cruelly. "You haven't got standards. You've got frostbite."

Her eyes heated. Furious, she opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind (or a piece of her fist, she hadn't yet decided), but was interrupted as the waiter leaned forward, setting a plate of wings and fries in front of them both. Her words died on her lips at their interruption, and he could see her train of thought derailing on her lips.

Thank Hyne for Quistis' innate sense of audience consciousness. She seemed more interest in inspecting her food for movement than yelling at him. For the moment.

He expected her to pick up when she left off as Joe left, but she remained curiously silent. In fact, she seemed to be looking everywhere but at him. Her silence bothered him, as it had when they were children.

He hadn't hurt her feelings…had he? Impossible. Quistis Trepe didn't have feelings, at least not feelings she kept far out enough to be hurt…right?

"_What_?" he asked, after awhile, the silence grating on him for a reason he couldn't explain.

She glared at him, holding a wing in her hand and waving it at him like a whip handle. "What?! You have the nerve to ask me _what_? You are…_impossible_…Seifer Almasy…and I don't know why I put up with you!"

Before he could warn her, she took a large bite of the chicken wing, chewing as angrily as she could with her mouth closed. He leaned back in his seat, shook his head, and waited.

Joe's Famous Spicy Chocobo Wings were an…acquired taste. Acquired, after one had lost most of the taste buds on one's tongue…as Quistis was about to find out.

Sure enough, she stopped chewing suddenly, eyes growing wide and cheeks heating in a different sort of distress. She glanced around, wildly, looking for her seltzer water. He bet she regretted dumping it on him, now. Having found nothing else suitable, she finally grabbed his drink and took a long gulp of it.

He laughed even harder as she squinted her face up in a new sort of disgust, and lurching, leaned over to spit the mouthful onto the floor.

"Fetching," he chuckled, calmly taking a bite of his wing.

She cast him a dark look. "You might have warned me that this food was going to burn away a layer of skin," she accused, running her sleeve across her lips in a most un-lady and un-Quistis-like fashion. "Hyne, I don't know which is worse. The food, the drink" she wiped her mouth. "Or the company."

"Picky picky," he chided. It was nice to have her talking to him again, even if she was bitching. "They taste _mild_ to me."

"I'm sure, considering most of the foul things that come out of your mouth, the wings would be mild be comparison." She returned, picking at her food. "Are the fries safe?"

That blasted smirk had yet to wipe itself off of his face. "Yeah. They're safe."

Cautiously, she nibbled on the end of a fry, regarding him mistrustfully. He just chuckled and returned to his food.

Still fuming, Quistis looked around the room, taking in the taxidermic decoration- stuffed cactuars, a stuffed snow lion head, and Moomba paw ashtrays. The women in this bar looked as if they could crack walnuts in their elbow creases, and the men looked about two steps away from primordial ooze. She made a face.

Seifer just smirked. If she hated Joe's, she was _definitely_ going to hate Déjà vu. He took a sip of his beer, finding the rim tasted just a little like vanilla…like her. He licked his lips. Sweet.

Shaking his head, he went back to his plate, glancing around the old bar to distract himself. Not much had changed. This side of Balamb had been one of his favorite haunts during his time as a Garden student-sneaking out with a stolen rental all night and returning in the early hours of the morning. Seifer enjoyed the darker sides of things- the hidden alleys and crowded bars, where people were more human. Not like those snobby hotels and fancy restaurants. Sometimes, Rajin and Fujin had joined him, but he mostly went alone. He had never paid much attention to the curfew restrictions.

Hell, he had never paid much attention to _any_ restrictions.

"So," she said, keeping her voice just loud enough for him to hear her. "What did you find at the apartment?" It was obvious that she was still angry with him, but that her curiosity had won over. It usually did.

It was what he had counted on during their childhood.

He set his glass on the counter. "Nothing, really. The windows were broken in, and hadn't been repaired. There were burn marks all over the carpet, but that could've been from smoking as well as anything else. The place reeked of nicotine. It's obviously no one that knew her or her kids, though, at least not personally."

"What makes you say that?"

"If the kids knew the person, they would have let them in." he replied, running a hand through his hair. "Who knows, though. It could have been anyone."

Quistis looked thoughtful. "That girl I was talking to. Anna. She said something about the men coming to get those two kids. She said they didn't take her because their '_boss'_ didn't want her. I don't know what to make of it- it could be a child's tale, but it could certainly be something more."

Seifer was silent, his gaze far away.

"Seifer?"

No answer.

"Seifer." She touched his arm. He jumped, eyes landing on hers, and for a moment, his gaze seemed frighteningly familiar.

_Seifer, standing in the parade, the light catching his eyes like silver fangs, pointed with madness; smile as wicked as a dark secret-_

He blinked, and all at once, the look was gone. He gazed at her, as if surprised to see her in front of him.

"Seifer, what is all this?" she asked. The question wasn't hostile. It was genuine. And he couldn't blame her for asking it. He'd dragged her out here on a wild goose chase, following a feeling that he couldn't explain, or even grasp for certain. She'd come with him, willingly, but she didn't understand.

Neither did he, really. This whole thing was like one big fucking rubix cube. He had the nagging feeling that it clicked together somehow-he just couldn't see it yet.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I just feel like…something isn't right. I just can't explain it."

She sat back in her seat. "I don't understand any of this either." She admitted, eyes meeting his. "It's all so strange…"

Quistis looked into his eyes, searching.

"Whatever it all is, I have the feeling it's closer than we think," replied Seifer.

_The tower…_

_The children…_

_Seifer…._

"So do I." She said, quietly.


	25. Bar Fights and Pink Ribbons

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading through this F&I re-re-write- we're about halfway through. Please, if you have time, leave a review! Thanks!

Recommended Listening: 'The Difference" by Matchbox 20,  "Run to the Water" by Live, and for a certain scene, dance-type music. "The Difference" actually inspired part of this chapter.

**SLOW DANCING  
ON THE BOULEVARD  
IN THE QUIET MOMENTS  
WHILE THE CITY'S STILL DARK**

SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE SUMMER RAIN  
IN THE TIRED SPACES  
YOU COULD HEAR HER NAME

 AND FOR ALL YOU KNOW  
THIS COULD BE  
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU NEED  
AND WHAT YOU WANT TO BE

NIGHT SWIMMING  
IN HER DIAMOND DRESS  
MAKING SMALL CIRCLES  
MOVE ACROSS THE SURFACE

STAND WATCHING  
FROM THE STEADY SHORE  
LYING WIDE OPEN  
AND WAITING FOR

 …EVERY WORD YOU NEVER SAID  
ECHOES DOWN YOUR EMPTY HALLWAY  
EVERYTHING THAT WAS YOUR WORLD  
JUST CAME DOWN  
IT JUST CAME DOWN

DAY BREAKING ON THE BOULEVARD  
FEEL THE  
SUN WARMING UP YOUR SECONDHAND HEART  
LIGHT SWIMMING RIGHT ACROSS YOUR FACE  
YOU THINK  
MAYBE SOMEDAY  
MAYBE SOMEDAY

**-excerpts taken from 'The Difference' by Matchbox 20**

Disclaimer: If I owned Squaresoft, I'd own several candy factories and need a forklift to leave my decadent mansion filled with puppies.

Chapter 21

Balamb Park was located just on the edge of the city, about three blocks in width and length combined. It was a stone's throw from the beach, and the scent of salt water hung heavy in the air. A row of old, rusted monkey bars sat between a grove of trees, and red cobblestone paths snaked all through the grass. Far away, the distant hum of a train whistle could be heard, the sound an almost mellow whisper on the wind.

A few willow trees sprung up on the dead grass nearest the benches, and towards the center lay a sandbox with a few toys scattered beneath the sand. The wind rustled through the almost skeleton arms of the trees, whistling through the grass and clinking the swings together, as if ghost children still inhabited the park. The merry-go-round spun idly in the wind, squeaking to no one.

The park was empty, save for the slouching forms of three tired SeeD's, legs and arms sprawled out against the bench and one another. The three had changed back into their normal clothing, and were tightly bound in long coats, legs stretched out in front of them and shoulders resting on one another. Combat boots sunk into the muddy grass, the shine dull in the December sun. All three looked unprofessional, but not one of them seemed to care.

It was an empty playground, and three individuals who had never really been children at all were taking shelter in its serenity…a quiet irony.

The three had met at the Bait, Not Fried Shop, silently nodding and falling into step behind Selphie as they walked in silence along the sidewalks, changing in the public park's small bathrooms. They would not be recognized, even in the unlikely event that BioTech or AmmuCorp could gather enough evidence to grow any more suspicious.

Now, the three visibly relaxed, letting the tension evaporate from their brains and bodies, breathing in the clear, salty air of Balamb's coast.

"Got it?" asked Selphie, glancing over at Arya and Irvine from her perch on one end of the bench, speaking for the first time that the three had been united.

Arya nodded. "Got it?" she returned to Selphie, lifting up slightly to meet her friend's gaze across from Irvine.

Selphie nodded, giving her a thumbs-up.

The two heaved a collective sigh. Both girls turned to regard Irvine, whose hat was folded over his face, arms crossed and long legs stretched out in front of him. Both giggled. The cowboy was sound asleep.

Selphie frowned suddenly. "What happened to his face?" she whispered, indicating the small red welt that stretched up the tanned surface of his cheek.

It was sheer force of will that kept the smile off of Arya's face. "Fell down some stairs," she whispered.

Selphie frowned, but leaned back, watching the edge of the park for the line of the train to appear. The three young SeeD's huddled tightly together, dozing like a pride of lions in the winter sun.

…

…

…

"So much for not drawing attention to ourselves," muttered Quistis, as both she and Seifer exited Joe's Tavern into the brisk late afternoon air. Clearly, the other patrons thought the two intended to make good on Seifer's crude ballad, and a roar of applause and innuendos had followed their exit, much to Seifer's amusement and Quistis' escalating horror. Quistis wasn't quite sure why she found the whole situation so embarrassing, but it was even _more_ embarrassing to be uncomfortable in front of Seifer.

Seifer just shook his head, glancing over at Quistis. "Why is it so important that we're inconspicuous, anyway?"

Quistis waved her hand. "Oh, I don't know, _perhaps_ the fact that Galbadian politicians are currently attempting to get us labeled as a large-scale terrorist faction?" She glared at him out of the corner of her eye. "To name _one_ of many. The less any of us are seen, the better."

Seifer just rolled his eyes in response and muttered something about a stick.

"Besides," continued Quistis, resolutely ignoring him, "You and I are hardly inconspicuous figures. You especially." She swallowed, the burning aftertaste of the wings still lingering in her throat. It was definitely the last time she let Seifer select a restaurant.

"Yeah, what can I say? I'm a real fucking celebrity." Though said flippantly, a certain bitterness surrounded his words that were not lost on Quistis. Seifer's brand of fame wasn't necessarily a coveted commodity. Quistis had suffered through her own fame after the second Sorceress war, which consisted of nagging reporters, uncomfortable TV interviews, a few badly done comic books, and a widely popular movie spin-off that made Zell and Rinoa laugh and the rest of them cringe. Quistis had been played by a popular Dolletian swimsuit model, and was still irritated about the director's choice in clothing. She hadn't stormed onto a battlefield in high heeled boots and a tube top, damnit. She sincerely hoped Seifer hadn't seen the film.

Seifer adjusted the lapels of his black trench coat around his neck. He'd ripped off the SeeD patch off this new one, and although this coat didn't fit as well as his old, gray piece, it was certainly less conspicuous. There wasn't anything he could do about the scar.

The two walked in silence for a while before Quistis glanced over at him. "What exactly do you know about this Déjà Vu?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest as they walked to keep out the cool air that now swept the streets.

"Not much. Guarsen'll be there after eight." Well, that was true. Déjà vu was a place Seifer had only heard of, built recently on the outskirts of town by some guy named Xared Jawson who had a bad reputation for drug and firearms and even more shady side jobs.  The place was bound to be interesting, to say the least.

The very least.

Trepe was giving him that scrutinizing look again, the one that she'd often awarded him as her student. "Well, what _do_ you know about it?"

They were nearly the edge of town now, the edges of the horizon beginning to darken with dusk. "It's uh, very…reputable." He replied evasively, walking up to the building where a neon sign read: _Live Action, this week featuring Velvet Knight. _Quistis didn't appear to notice it.            

Seifer almost chuckled. Quistis was about to find out that Déjà vu was on the edge of town for a very good reason.

The building was a plain, white brick, surrounded by poorly grown grass and a few stray beer bottles. Seifer snatched Quistis' wrist and glanced at her watch. "Seven fifty-nine. Right on time."

Quistis scrunched up her nose as she took in the atmosphere, and Seifer let her hand drop back down to the side. "_Another_ bar?"

Seifer looked at the sky. "You might say that," he replied, pushing through the doors and holding them open as Quistis ducked in after him.

Quistis tried to squint through the smoke that pooled up from the floors, red lights flashing strobe as sweaty bodies twisted and turned in the dark room, mostly men raising beer glasses and whooping like primates in heat. Scantily clad waitresses weaved through the crowds, balancing beer-laden trays above their heads with one hand and slapping away stray hands with the other.

Quistis curled her nose. Human evolution had stopped short here, and by the looks of it, stopped directly after Erectus part.

Her body tensed instantly as she surveyed the perimeter. Crowded corners, large groups of uncontrolled, heavily intoxicated people, and aside from Seifer's prowess with Hyperion and her Save the Queen looped on her belt underneath her own black trench coat, they were relatively unarmed. One exit, if one didn't count the windows. Her casting and debatably her strongest defense was null and void, and Seifer's casting was limited. Seifer was a physical fighter by design, but she doubted his sword skills would be of much use in a crowded atmosphere like this one. She wasn't sure exactly what made her nervous, but the uneasiness was there, same trepidation coiling low in her belly like a rattler pre-strike.

Quistis disliked situations in which she lacked the upper hand, but this one, should it go bad, she had virtually no hand at all.

She noticed the strobe lights strung along the ceilings, and several wooden platforms from which metal poles protruded. Mirrors dotted almost every available wall space. Quistis frowned.

_Wait a minute_…

She turned to him. "Seifer, just what kind of a bar _is_ this?"

As if on cue, a pair of overhead lights snapped on, and the whooping and hollering increased. "And now, gentlemen, all the way from Dollet, a school teacher that's just dyyyyying to teach you a lesson…she'll make you stay after class….Miss Velllllllvet Knight!"

Music blared, and Quistis' hands jumped to her ears as a red curtain was flung dramatically back. A pair of long legs stepped out, curtailed by a shamefully short wool skirt and a matching double-breasted wool jacket. Catcalls erupted. An obnoxious guitar solo nearly splintered her ear drums.

"A _reputable_ establishment, Seifer?" shouted Quistis, turning back to glare at him. She could barely think above the blaring music.

Seifer folded his arms. "Well, I didn't say it was a _good_ reputation…" He flashed her a mischievous grin, one she knew was supposed to soften her up but only made her want to strangle him more.

Suddenly, Ms. Knight thrust off her wool jacket and white button down shirt, revealing nothing beneath. Well, nothing natural, of that Quistis was fairly certain.

"Oh, _nice_." Muttered Quistis, shaking her head.

"Yeah, _nice_." Echoed Seifer.

Quistis elbowed him in the ribs.

"What?" he snarled irritably, rubbing his side.

"Oh, nothing, just the voluntary socio-subjugation of women using false principals of aesthetics and sexuality. Nothing a modern-day woman wouldn't _love_ to advocate." She gave him a look as if it were obvious.

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Oh, right." He feigned distress. "I meant, look at all this oppression! It must be really subjugating to have to take money from moro-"

Another elbow caught him in the ribs. "Hyne, I was _agreeing_!" he snapped. Really, the blatant eroticism of the strip bar was fairly antiseptic to Seifer, but it was fun to piss Trepe off.

"Maybe if you'd applied some of those moves in your classroom…" he muttered, earning another, harder, elbow to the stomach. Rubbing his side, he followed after Quistis, who was now shoving her way through the crowd. He turned away from the dancer in the blink of his eye, his gaze not held by the neon lights and swaying flesh like the other male eyes in the bar.

The array of women that had woven in and out of his young life were mostly unmemorable, brief interludes that involved little else but momentary lust. Most of the women that he had been with had thrown themselves at him with little effort on his part and he'd quickly grown bored with them- there was little challenge in and out of the bed. They'd had no personality and very little intelligence, and while appealing at seventeen, it was hardly attractive now. He'd managed to seduce a couple of debutants, but that had been more for fun than out of any seriousness on his part. Now, almost twenty-one, his life before seemed some immature, trite amusement…a veritable fucking circus of little substance and even less foresight.

Nine tenths of the women he had been with he blamed on hormones. The other tenth could probably be claimed as temporary insanity, and Rinoa's case...well she was everything a man like him wasn't supposed to have, but wanted anyway. It was like buying expensive art without knowing what it meant or why it was so damned expensive in the first place. You bought it just to have it, because that was what you did when you had money. He dated a girl like Rinoa, because that was what you were supposed to do when you had a dick.

Seifer staggered back as an obviously drunk man bumped into him from behind, sloshing beer onto his jacket. He glared at him, and the man redirected his stagger, stumbling into another man like a wayward ping-pong ball.

Ms. Knight had now shed her skirt, and was currently accepting gil in the crudest manners possible. Quistis just frowned with disgust and headed further into the club. Some women were a discredit to professionalism.

Seifer chuckled at her expression and followed after her, eyes skimming the crowds, his hand a feather-light touch against her back so that he wouldn't lose her. At least, that's what he told himself.

"Hey, you know, if that Instructor position ever falls through for you, Trepe-…Ow! Fuck! Watch the kidneys!"

…

…

…

Zell stretched back in his seat, interlacing fingers over his swollen abdomen and groaning at the ceiling. Twenty-two hot dogs had seemed like such a wonderfully delicious idea an hour ago, but now, all twenty-two of the tasty morsels were threatening to throw themselves back up.

His groan echoed through the empty cafeteria as he pressed his cheek to the cool surface of the table and prayed to die. Not for the first time, he made the pledge that he was never going to eat another hot dog as long as he lived. He could practically feel the lining of his stomach tearing.

Selphie had once compared him to a dog. Leave a dog alone in a room full of food, she'd said, and it'll eat itself to death. Zell moaned like a man possessed. The dog had eaten even more than he had, but hadn't seemed bothered. The dog…

_Oh shit!_

He opened his eyes, only to find the mongrel that had once lain at his feet nowhere to be found.

"Shit shit shit!" groaned Zell, clambering to his feet and then quickly gripping his stomach like a pregnant woman about to give birth. Where the hell could the dog have gone? It was there a second ago…

Shit. Quistis was going to kill him…and who knew who or what the dog was currently munching on. He tore out of the cafeteria as fast as he was able to run, gripping his stomach and making a mental note to drink a few bottles of stomach antacid as soon as he was back in his room.

He grabbed the first cadet he saw by the collar, out of breath and sweating. "Hey, you," he panted. "Have you…seen a giant dog… come this way?"

The cadet stared wide-eyed at him. "Some beast just escaped from the training center, if that's what you mean. Serabin's been chasing after it for the past hour."

Oh, great. Serabin. The level 30 cadet had kept up what was once Seifer's abandoned Disciplinary Committee for awhile, and ran it twice as tight. Serabin made Xu look disorganized, and in terms of seriousness often made Squall look like a party animal.

_Shit_.

Zell could see his SeeD rank going down the tubes…any minute now. Level 20…level 15…. level 10…He'd be scrubbing the sub-level floors with a toothbrush…

"Did you…see where it went?" gasped Zell, leaning on the baffled cadet for support.

"Who man, Serabin?"

"No! The monster! I mean, the dog!"

"Uh, I dunno, last time I saw that thing, it was tearing back _into_ the Training Center. Looked like a baby Wendigo or something, man."

Zell released him, barreling down the hall. If Serabin got ahold of Cerberus…or if Cerberus got ahold of Serabin…

"Shit…Shit…Shit…" muttered Zell, running down the hall and grimacing as a tongue of fire caressed the inner walls of his stomach lining. Damned hotdogs…they'd be the death of him. Either that, or _this_ dog.

…Or Quistis.

Man, he didn't need this shit. He was going to give himself gallstones by the age of twenty-five.

Quickly, he ran through the sliding doors of the Training Center, scanning the somewhat jungle-like atmosphere for any sign of a darkly colored beast, or the remains of one.

He heard rustling, and turned to see Cerberus marking a tree, panting, and a T-Rexaur retreating back into the foliage.

Zell would never be able to prove that the dog actually scared the T-Rexaur, but the story quickly became one of his favorites, till according to Zell, years later, Cerberus had taken down two T-Rexaurs and eaten a bite bug in a single gulp.

"**There** you are," said a voice behind him.

Serabin.

Zell glanced back, only to see Serabin on the other end of a standard issue Valiant, the barrel pointed directly at the dog. He didn't even appear to see Zell.

"No, don't-" started Zell, but Serabin's finger had already closed around the trigger, The gunfire echoed off the walls of the Training Center, followed by one very surprised shout.

…

…

…

"This is just wonderful," muttered Quistis, staring around the club.

The bar lay in the center of the small, cramped space, an area where patrons gathered like ants on a honey puddle. Several stages lay off to the side- small wooden platforms surrounded by chairs. The music was much louder here, and Quistis could barely hear herself think. The sooner they questioned the woman and got out, the better. This place made her nervous, and for good reason.

She assumed Ms. Guarsen was here. If she wasn't, Seifer was going to have a lot of explaining to do…with Save the Queen wrapped around his throat.

The bar sported virtually no women patrons, and notice was quickly and unfortunately taken of Quistis. A string of catcalls followed her as the two walked further in.

Quistis blinked as a gil note was suddenly thrust in her face. "Hey honey, how much for a lap dance? I got-"

The man never finished his sentence. Quistis' fist snapped around, sending the man spinning. The drunk hit the bar, crumpling down into an unconscious heap. A waitress stepped over him.

Seifer chuckled. "Damn, that was sexy."

Quistis grabbed her hand, gritting her teeth. In her haste, she'd hit him wrong.  "What?" she shouted, above the noise.

"I said," shouted Seifer, leaning closer. "That was hot!"

She rolled her eyes before grabbing his neck and pulling him down to her level. He willingly obliged, stooping lower. The intoxicating smell of her perfume wafted up to him as she leaned in closer to be heard.

"I am _assuming_ that Ms. Guarsen works here, unless you want to get yourself killed for wasting my time in this sort of establishment." She pressed closer to him as another patron accidentally bumped into her, and he took ahold of her waist to bring her out of the way. Surprisingly, she didn't protest. "How are we going to find her?"

He leaned closer, her sweater shifting and his hand accidentally brushing the bare skin of her hip. She shifted, her body moving into the gesture without thinking. Seifer quickly withdrew his hand.  "We'll check the back rooms."

"Isn't that going to get us in trouble?" she asked, wondering at the shiver that coursed through her body at the accidental touch. The room certainly wasn't cold…

"We'll see." His voice was a low rumble in her ear, and suddenly, she wasn't thinking about the crowded strip club, or the lewd men in the background…just his hand on her waist and his lips nearly brushing her ear.

"Hey honey….what d' **I** gotta pay to get a little attention?"

Her spine stiffened at the interruption, and Seifer could have killed the drunken moron behind them as she tried to pull away. He kept his grip on her, however. Was he imagining it, or were her cheeks a little flushed?

He looked around the crowded club, letting his eyes travel over the crowd until they came to rest on a 'changing room sign'. Unfortunately, the door looked to be guarded by a man whose neck was nearly twice the size of Seifer's thigh. 

_This_ was going to be interesting.

She swatted at his hand. "You can let me go now, you know."

_What the hell was she thinking? That was just it. For a moment, she hadn't been. _

Seifer, meanwhile, shook his head, removing his hand. Hot, cold. The day he figured out women was a cold day in Hell.

"The dressing room's over that way."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I dunno, the big neon sign _may_ have given it away."

She glared at him before stalking back into the crowd. Seifer rolled his eyes.

In truth, although Seifer certainly didn't mind touching Quistis, he'd actually had good intentions. Places like this were even more unpredictable than regular bars. The mixture of testosterone and liquor made for a very…volatile atmosphere, one that would prove dangerous to even a deadly SeeD like Quistis.

Wait a damned minute. Hell, was he beginning to feel…protective, over Trepe?

Impossible.

He turned back, only to find Quistis nowhere in sight.

Shit.

"Hey cutie, imagine meeting you here!" A voice rang out behind him, and a hand seized his jacket.

_Shit_.

…

…

…

Quistis had been glancing over her shoulder, trying to find the exit in the throng and clear her head at the same time. She turned around at the somewhat muffled sound of his voice, but didn't see him. He had disappeared into the almost gyrating throng of morons that surrounded the wooden stages.

Quistis looked around the club, blinking against the thick, almost suffocating combination of smoke and the heavy scent of beer. "Seifer!" she shouted. A few drunken chuckles echoed after her. A hand squeezed her side, and she whirled, only to find laughter and that the mass of bodies had just closed in around her. Quistis narrowed her eyes. This was not a good situation. "Seifer!" she shouted again. She could see the back of the club, where the changing room door was, but Seifer wasn't there.

She scanned the mess of sweaty bodies, looking for a familiar blonde boy in a dark trench coat.

She found him after what seemed like hours- in a corner with a young woman, who looked more than happy to see him.  
The brunette held a tray fastened to her hip, long legs sheathed in black leather boots with a black skirt and red halter-top. The other parts of her that weren't fastened to the tray, however, seemed fastened to Seifer.

Furious, she stalked out towards the door. If he was going to waste her time, then she'd leave him here in Balamb...

She turned, only to run into something solid. She opened her eyes to find herself staring at a man's shirt buttons on a swollen chest. Following those buttons, she came to be looking at a man whose neck seemed to be roughly the size of the span of her hand. Something clamped onto her wrist, and she looked down to find the man's meaty hand encircling it.

"Well, well, well, fellas, what we got here? Seems this little filly strayed a little to far from the herd, eh?" Quistis' eyes narrowed.

_Filly_?

"Kindly release me."

"Lissin' t'this one, eh? Puttin' on airs in a place like this…you get lost, sweetheart?" The laughter increased.

"I'll only ask you one more time," she stated calmly.

The man's grip increased, his fat stomach shaking with laughter. "Whatcha gonna do, honey? Kick me in the shin?"

In a move faster than the man's brain could register, she kicked out his knees from under him, then quickly doubled it up with a kick to the groin on his descent. The giant fell over, and Quistis leaned in, stamping her boot onto the man's forehead and glaring down at him. "If I have to tell you a third time, you'll walk away with parts missing." She'd heard Xu say that once, and had always wanted to try it out. No one placed testicular threats quite like her friend.

She glanced towards the back room, where Seifer had said that Mrs. Guarsen would be. Was she really going to pass up the chance to interview that woman and find those children, just because Seifer was an idiot who didn't think a coherent thought above his navel?

And just when did she start caring about what brain Seifer Almasy chose to think with?

_Since he became your responsibility_, she reasoned. _That's all_.

Gritting her teeth, Quistis turned and made her way to the back room. This time, the crowd actually parted a little. Perhaps she'd overdone it with that big oaf, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

Shaking her head, she once again shoved her way through the crowd. If Seifer wanted to get laid, let him do it on his own time.  She was going to question the woman and get the hell out of here.

…

….

…

Seifer was just about to look back to see where Quistis was, when something soft barreled into him, sending him flat against the wall.

"Seifer Almasy!"

Seifer grimaced again. He knew that voice, and it most certainly didn't belong to Quistis. In fact, if memory served correctly, that voice belonged to a hot, young waitress that he had added to his one-night collection a number of years ago after too many tequila shots. Although the young woman herself was most decidedly forgettable, owing to the fact that she carried all her assets below neck-level, her voice was not. High-pitched, whiney…it had driven him nuts for the few hours he'd associated with her.

Not that they had talked much.

Seifer grimaced. The girl was looking up at him, head cocked like a bird, her long brown hair hanging down to her ass and a few thousand layers of mascara weighting down her lashes. Her breasts nearly spilled out of her halter-top, and although that was interesting, like the rest of her, it was only momentarily so.

"You remember me, don't you?" she asked, pressing her hip into his as if that gesture along would make her simply unforgettable. Seifer was quickly getting disgusted, and alarmed.

The _fuck_ was her name?

Unless feminism had opened some new drawer of empowerment in the past two years, he doubted women particularly appreciated having their names forgotten. Looking around the bar, he ran a hand through his hair. "Of course I remember you." He replied evasively. _Maria, Gretchen, Zui, Emilia, Gabriella…_shit shit shit…

"So, what brings you here?" she asked. "Looking for me?"

Hell, no. "Not exactly," he replied smoothly, once again searching the crowd for Quistis' form. She was going to kill him.

_…Lisa, Jasmine, Jynne, Rachelle…_

Hyne, he was beginning to feel like a slut.

She was just smiling, frowning a little as she stared up at him. "You don't remember my name, do you?" She asked, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

"Of course I remember your name," he replied, sweating. _Luara__, Andres, Lilia_…Lilia! That was it! Lilia Loren. He turned his grin to full blast. "How could I forget a name like Lilia?"

Her eyes lit up, and he knew he'd gotten it right. "That's not _all_ you remember, I hope."  She was leaning closer now, smiling that same come hither smile that had all the cheap brilliance of a neon light.

When the hell did he develop standards?

He pressed at her shoulders to pry her off of him. He looked up at her, searching for an explanation to give her that would distract her long enough to make an exit.

Only to find himself looking at Quistis Trepe, smiling her tigress smile, standing directly behind Lilia. Lilia, both astonished and admonished, followed Seifer' gaze back to where Quistis stood.

"I didn't know you had a girlfriend." Lilia gasped.

Quistis considered for a moment denying that, and leaving Seifer to deal with his little female problem. However, this situation could most definitely be used to her advantage, and Quistis Trepe was not one to let an opportunity pass. Trying to play the angry, distressed girlfriend, she instantly narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms and straightening her posture.

Lilia's dark eyes were on her instantly, appraising her competition. "She doesn't look like your type," she remarked.

Quistis smiled sweetly in return. "He's upgraded from gutter trash since you knew him, if that's what you mean."

Furious, the other woman straightened up, face contorting with fury. "Did you just 'dis' me?"

Quistis cocked her head at the other girl's language. "If 'dissing' means accurately calibrating your personality, then yes, I have."

Lilia's eyes flashed with confusion for a moment, then registered that Quistis had most likely insulted her. "Prissy little-." She raked a hand up to slap Quistis, but that hand was quickly caught, and wrenched behind her back. The shorter brunette squealed in pain.

"If that was the extent of your fighting abilities, I suggest you work on making this up to me," said Quistis.

Lilia squirmed, hollering like a stuck pig as Quistis tightened her grip on her arm. "Owwwww! Okay, okay, how can I make it up to you?"

Quistis pretended to consider. "I want you to go and get Sheri Guarsen for me."

"Whadda you want to talk to her for?" asked the shorter girl.

Quistis tightened her grip, earning another squeal from the shorter brunette in front of her. "Making it up to me does not entail asking questions. Now go run along." Quistis released the girl, watching with satisfaction as she ran past the man with two necks into the dressing room.

Seifer was looking at her with amusement. "A cat fight for me, Ms. Trepe?"

"Don't flatter yourself," replied Quistis, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in a very ladylike fashion. "She was simply the easiest route to Ms. Guarsen." She looked behind her, a twisted smile on her face as she tapped her chin. "You know, I do believe she was wearing press-on nails?"

"Fuck you."

The blonde woman in front of him simply clucked her tongue. "Such language-"

Quistis felt a sudden pressure on her arm, and Seifer looked up, suddenly. Quistis turned to see a man who testosterone had obviously been kind to. He towered over both of the young soldiers, and had a glazed, single-minded look to his eye. Brawn and not much brain.

The perfect bouncer.

"Mr. Jaweson doan like people messin' up his bitches unless you plan to **be** one of them, honey."

Quistis glared back at him. "Kindly let go of my arm." She snapped.

The man looked past a seething Quistis to Seifer. "She yores?"

Seifer shrugged. "You might say that," he replied.

The big man released her, and Quistis turned fully and furiously to face the larger man.

"So, whadaya want?" asked the oaf. "You bein' a distraction. Mr. Jaweson doan like distractions."

"We're reporters, here to do a story on Ms. Guarsen," replied Seifer, crossing his arms and staring back at the lumbering giant.

The man crossed his massive arms, shaking his head. "Mr. Jaweson don't like reporters."

"What is your name?" asked Quistis, glaring at the man. He reminded her of a rogue Ward.

"Not important." Replied the colossal statue.

"Well, in that case, 'Not Important'," replied Quistis, getting angry. "We're SeeD's."

"No good." The mammoth shook his head. "Mr. Jaweson _hates_ SeeD's."

"Mr. Jaweson doesn't like much of anything, does he?" asked Quistis, wryly.

The giant didn't answer, but looked as if he were contemplating the quickest way to get rid of the two people in front of him. Not a train of thought Seifer was fond of.

Seifer stepped in front of Quistis. "Did she say SeeD? She meant, 'paying customers.' We'd like to _pay_ for an hour of Ms. Guarsen's time."

At the mention of pay, the big oaf inclined his head. Apparently he was trained to the scent of money. "How much you got?"

Seifer turned to look at Quistis. "How much money do you have?" he asked.

Quistis narrowed her eyes. "I'm not giving him-"

Seifer glared at her and lowered his voice. "Look, you've obviously got no better ideas and there's no way either one of us can take this guy in here without causing a commotion. So," he leaned closer. "How much money do you have?"

The look in her eyes could melt iron, he was sure of it. "Three hundred gil."

"Give it to me."

She simply glared at him.

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Do you want to be here all night?"

"Of course not!" she snapped.

"Then give it to me." He snarled. Glowering at him, she reached into her bag and shoved her money into his palm.

Seifer reached into his back pocket, pulling out two one hundred Gil notes. "Here. Five hundred gil. Mr. Guarsen likes money, doesn't he?"

'Not Important' curled the small notes in his fist, then turned without a word. Seifer and Quistis exchanged a shrug, then followed after him into the back room.

The hallway was a dimly lit rat hole, with cracks in the ceiling and a single, dim bulb that swung eerily from the ceiling. Quistis seemed to shrink away from the edges of the halls, as if each dim corridor made her uneasy.

Seifer could relate.

The bouncer stopped in front of a tattered looking door, knocking three times. "You got an hour. Don't cause no trouble."

"Let me guess," asked Quistis dryly. "Mr. Jaweson doesn't like trouble."

"Not Important" cast Quistis an angry glare before stalking away.

Seifer just smirked at her. "When did you become a smartass, Trepe?"

She shrugged. "Must be contagious."

The door creaked open, revealing a short, blonde-haired woman that at one time might have been beautiful, but time and weathering had made haggard. Her eyes, probably once an exotic cut of blue, were dimmed and faded to a dull cerulean luster and heavily dusted with mascara. Her blonde hair, bottle born, was frizzed and streaked under the cheap florescent lighting. A bright red halter-top hugged a pair of sagging breasts, and black leather pants sagged below her hips, exposing a thin, white cesarean scar line. It was a sad picture of a woman…and an even sadder shell of a human being. The woman's face still held a cheap beauty, but it was hollow.

It was a face that had seen too many neon lights to be beautiful any longer.

She looked them over, eyes appraising. "Well, ain't you a tall, handsome drink 'o man." Her eyes traveled over Quistis. "Don't git many women back here, but whuteva tickles ya, honies. 'Mon in. Ya got fifteen minutes."

The dressing room was bare, save for a vase of dead roses with crumbling black heads and a small vanity with a folding chair. A small rack sat on wheels in the background, upon which a few sparse, glittery outfits were tacked. A white moth knocked itself against the single bulb in the room, powder falling from its wings with every clink.

"We paid for an hour," insisted Quistis.

The woman chuckled. "Y'all doan't gotta wine an' dine me. Whateva you wan's only gonna take a quarter of an' hour, believe me."

"All right," she said, gesturing them in with an impatient wave of her hand and a crack of her gum. "What'd y'all pay for?" She bent over, fixing a strap on her high-heeled shoes. "Lap dance, five minutes o' heaven, shoe shine, blow-"

"An interview." Said Seifer, quickly.

The woman straightened a suspicious gleam in her eyes. "A inter-view?" she repeated. "That some sorta new position?"

Seifer folded his arms. "We want to question you about the events that happened the night your children disappeared."

Ms. Guarsen stopped applying her lipstick mid-swipe. "You th' cops?"

Seifer shook his head. "No. We're just-"

"Furthering the investigation." Finished Quistis.

The woman straightened, and Quistis could see clearly the bags under her eyes. "It's the same ol' story I told the cops. Ah came home, late as usual. Usually Gwenth, she's the oldest, Gwen'd have Sinnera in bed and have some sorta sandwiches made, tv on, but the whole place was pitch black. Ah move t' turn on th' lights, and somethin' just bowls me over, then another thing, then another. Shit was broken all over, but the door latch wasn't smashed in at all. By th' time I get th' light on, my babies 're gone. Out th' window." The woman shook her head. "I doan understand it at all. If ah taught those girls one thing in mah whole failed parenting life, it was to lock that door and not lot anybody but me n' Hyne himself through."

"Your children were home alone, then?"

At that, the older woman glanced up sharply, a shred of pride glimmering in her eyes. It was a tattered, pathetic pride. "I didn' see people lining up with free baby-sitters to watch my girls while I put food on the table, so yeah, I guess they was alone."

Quistis shook her head. "Ms. Guarsen, we're not here to judge you."

The woman just uttered a wry chuckle and lit a cigarette. "Ain't that the biggest bullshit ever. Every day, people eatin' and livin' and breathin' judgement. Comes with havin' a heartbeat, honey. I don' care if people judge me 's long as they're payin'. So let's cut the bullshit. Ah'm trash, and we both know that. Y'all seem like nice couple an' all, and I 'preciate you tryin' to find my girls, but I ain't got all the time in the world. They're gone and I still gotta eat." She tilted her head up, smoke flowing from her painted red lips. "So les' just keep going now dat we got an understandin', all right, honey? And make 'em quick. Time is money and if you ain't made o' money I ain't got time."

Quistis' respect had just risen for the woman. She wasn't a particularly smart or admirable human being, but she understood the way of the world and was honest about it. Quistis could respect honesty, even in a place like this. "So," continued the young SeeD, "You don't believe your husband took the girls?"

Ms. Guarsen ran a hand through her hair, clearly distressed. "Farlen used t' beat me and I had some alcohol problems, back in the days, so the cops wasn't too keen on my story, specially since I had a…customer along." The older woman capped her lipstick and threw it back on the vanity. "They think 'cause a who I am I ain't got no concept o' what the truth is."

Quistis leaned forward. "Can you think of anyone who would take your children? Someone out for revenge, perhaps?"

Ms. Guarsen shook her head. "Police think Farlen took 'em, but Farlen never wanted those chil'ren t' begin with. He wouldn' take 'em, not even to spite me, an' the girls wouldn't a let 'im in, anyways."

Sighing, Ms. Guarsen ran a line of perfume between her breasts with a plastic applicator. "People I work with don't steal kids. They steal cigarettes and tip money and stereo sets. Not kids. They got enough a' their own."

"So you noticed no suspicious activity beforehand?" continued Quistis. "Nothing that would warn you that something strange was going on?"

The older woman looked in the mirror, adjusting her cleavage. "Sinnera was havin' her nightmares again. That Sinny was always havin' weird dreams, bout soldier men with blue eyes and a big spider lady that was gonna come eat her up. My psychic friend Billy Jo said all them nightmares was prolly 'cause we live in an' energy vortex or some shit, but Billy Jo's a crack ho that doesn't know shit from her arm pit. Anyways, smart girls, my girls. Big imaginations." Satisfied with the alignment of breasts, Ms. Guarsen turned away from the mirror. "A bad thing in a life like this. Never wanted my kids to be smart. They get smart, they start wonderin' what they're missin, wonder why things are the way they are. Ain't no answer for that. Things just is."

A knock sounded at the door. "Hey Kandy, you're on in five." Came a feminine voice on the other end.

"Yeah, all right." She hollered back, then turned back to her interviewers. "Look, fellas, sorry I can't be o' more help, but it's all I seen. Sure I thought it was a little weird three big shadows in the dark come t' take my kids when they was only two little girls and whoever wanted 'em coulda probly come alone an' dragged 'em out by their stick arms. I doan' know why anybody'd wanna take those kids." She looked straight at Quistis, the defeat and exhaustion in her eyes burning into her own. "Do me a favor, honey. You find 'em, don't bring 'em back here. There ain't nothin' here for anyone."

Another knock sounded at the door. "Kandy, get your sagging ass out there!"

"Hold yer horses, y' ol bitch!" she hollered back, stamping out her cigarette on the counter. "Well kids, it's been fun. Ah appreciate th' help an' all. Y'all take care now. Been the first time in a long time people paid t' ask me questions." She smiled, but the smile was as flat as the sparkle in her eyes- painted on and plastic.

Quistis attempted to return the wan emotion, but felt ice settle in her belly as the woman's sad gaze sank into hers. She might well have been looking at herself, along a different road.

It was the sadness inherent in womankind, in women like Quistis who so easily read others. Quistis saw herself in the fallen ashes of others, in the sadness and defeat of sullen spirits just as much as she absorbed their happiness..  It was the burden of a good woman, to constantly read the dark in other's eyes and load their sadness on her shoulders, testing the weight.

"I didn' ask fer this life." Came the mutter as the door shut behind her.

Silence remained a moment after Ms. Guarsen left, before Seifer turned to look at Quistis. She sighed. "Well, I'd say that we're right back where we started, minus a few hundred gil."

Seifer just shook his head. "I don't know what the hell I thought we'd find here…I just…have this feeling. I can't explain it. Like this is all supposed to make sense." He ran a hand through his hair. "Fuck, I sound crazy." He looked up at the feel of a hand on his shoulder to see Quistis, shaking her head.

"Not crazy. The more I listened to her, the more suspicious it sounds. Whether or not it links in with the IGCS occurrence, I doubt, Seifer, but there's more to it then the article expressed." Quistis checked her watch. "Come on, it's almost ten o' clock. We still can make the midnight train in plenty of time."

Seifer just nodded, and together, they headed down the narrow, haunting corridor back towards the main room. Seifer found he disliked the hallway as much as Quistis- failure was confining, cheaply lit and suffocating. It was the hall of a whorehouse, the rank room of a crumbling hotel…it was dank and putrid and smelt a little like cheap vodka.

Quistis flinched at the wave of noise and scent that assaulted her sense as soon as she opened the doors. As of now, she wanted nothing more than to get out of here, away from the noise and flash and fragrance of the dirty club, away from the image of the young mother and the shadows that haunted her eyes.

She wove through the crowd, Seifer behind her, weaving their bodies through the tangled orgy of sweat and skin that filled the small wooden room. Quistis stopped suddenly, tense, and Seifer looked ahead to see a large man sporting a black eye. A few others were with him, smaller lackeys with the shine of an obedient dog in their eyes.

"Yep, that's the one, boys." Boomed the man, still gripping his groin. "Let's teach 'er some manners."

One of the men, however, seemed to have taken an interest in Seifer. "Heyyyyy wait a minute…I know you! Weren't you th' Sorcerrrrrresss's little bitch? Hey lookit this, fellas! We got us a celebrity in our midst!" Seifer glared back. "An' whoo'ssss this, eh? A new witch?" Quistis felt Seifer's shoulder coil into a hard knot as he stiffened up next to her, eyes narrowing dangerously as he took in the men around them. "Y'know, I do believe if we git this one a muzzle, she'll dance real purty for us."

"We're leaving. We…don't want any trouble," mumbled Seifer.

Quistis was shocked. Seifer Almasy didn't want any trouble? Had the world gone mad?

The larger man just chuckled. "Maybe not, lapdog. But **we** do." With a start forward, he shoved Seifer a few steps backwards.

Furious, Quistis started forward, but rough hands grabbed her waist, suddenly, dragging her back. "Why doncha cast a spell on _me_, honey?"

Laughter.

"Get _off_ me!" she ordered, furious. Quickly, she twisted her body to the side, jabbing an elbow into her assailant's skull and whirling, only to be intercepted by another pair of hands.  She looked to see Seifer snap his head around at her and start forward. He was quickly intercepted by a man with a beer bottle, who cracked it over his head. Seifer slumped against the bar, dropping to one knee.

"Seifer!" Quistis started forward, but hands kept her effectively back.

Already distracted, Quistis turned to greet her attacker, only to swipe at nothing. Another hand was quickly on her ass, squeezing tight enough to hurt. Swearing, she whirled again, furious. Another hand closed around her arm, hauling limb and sweater further down to the floor. Her jacket was jerked off in one great tear. They were everywhere, and in the thick smoke and strobe light of the club, it was difficult to place faces with hands and aim correctly.

Fury made her careless, and she turned again, moving out of the grasp, only to realize that she'd moved farther into the fray.

Shit.

The sweater tore at the shoulder, and she swung around again, her fist connecting with the skull of the man closest to her right, but as soon as he stumbled back, another replaced him, hands tugging, pulling, yanking…one hand closed around her hair, jerking her hair back up towards the ceiling. The disco ball spun in her gaze as she wriggled, unsuccessfully, alcohol and sweat invading her nostrils as her boots slipped on the beer-soaked floor.

_Hands on her hair…_

_Alcohol intoxicating in her nostrils…_

_"Let me go! I'll go to my room, I promise!"_

Her eyes glazed like an animal coming out of the daze of headlights. She caught a man in the groin, who hissed and stumbled back. All at once, however, they had her arms again. A fist caught her across the jaw, the pain blunt and bright like lightening across her eyelids. She staggered, but their hands kept her up. She struck out with her elbow, feeling the soft crunch of cartilage splintering behind it- a broken nose.

_"I wonder, would you mind if I broke this?"_

_"Put her down. Hyne, put it down!"_

Her hair was loose in her face, and their grip was _hurting_, and she was Quistis Trepe, _damnit_, she was a SeeD trained to kill with her bare hands, to strike down entire armies with a graceful flick of her wrist, and she was snagged like an insect in some damned hell hole of a bar by a mob of drunk baboons. She heard what sounded like Sheri Guarsen's voice shout to let her go, but the sound was far away-

_The brush in her hair, hard and harsh and hurting-_

_Eyes watching her from the mirror, dark like coal and shimmering with vodka and bitterness-_

_Red, red, red, rising up, rising up to catch her-_

These damned memories, they rose up like waves and dragged her under like a dark dream, and she couldn't think, she couldn't move, and-

"Do you know what boys do to pretty little girls?"

_It was hurting, and her head was hurting-_

Fury curdled in her breast, quickly giving way to desperation. She tumbled off the slick surf of the floor and raising her legs, kicked them out, sending two men across the bar. She turned, then found herself flying, crashing into one of the tables behind her. She slipped on the floor, attempting to scramble to her feet. She grabbed onto a chair, crashing it over the head of an approaching attacker, but once again, she was leveled back onto the ground. Her head struck the table, and she nearly blacked out, but they were dragging her up again, laughing…

"Seifer!" She'd lost him in the crowd somewhere…. wildly, she searched for his face, but found nothing.  Her whip was no good- there was no room to wind it up properly, and no hands to grab it in the first place. "Seifer!" Desperate, she flexed her wrist, trying desperately to call a spell forth, but remembered, too late, the doctor's restriction on her casting-

Pain instead of magic surged forth in her arm, liquid magma boiling beneath her skin instead of the burbling rush of Blizzaga. Her veins shorted like a frayed wire, and her arms tremored in agony.  She screamed in pain, kicking out harder and thrashing her head back and forth, trying to slip her wrists out of their sweaty grasps long enough to jab her index finger into a waiting jugular. But it was the rage of a butterfly, caught in a net with only furious desperation beating in her wings-

Without her magic…she was helpless in a mob like this.

The throb of the beat was so loud in her mind, she couldn't hear anything else…and the lights, she couldn't see, couldn't see-

_Red…red….**red**….._

_The red carpet, tumbling down….hands in her hair and a whisper hot at her neck-_

_She couldn't breathe, and the darkness was rising up, up up-_

Suddenly, the hands released her, and she stumbled forward, turning to see a flurry of motion in front of her. The crowd parted like a school of fish under a shark attack, and she saw a familiar flash of blonde hair as another barreled forward, tackling the large man to the ground and raising his arm to bring his fist down into the man's face in a savage swipe.

Seifer.

The man punched Seifer in the stomach, but Seifer quickly brought his head down, cracking skulls with the bigger man and sending his skull back down onto the floor, punching him again in the face as his head ricocheted back up like a rubber ball. Blood sprayed across the floor and the man's head slammed into the ground yet again, nose obviously broken. Seifer swung again, catching the crooked, bloody stump of a nose once more, and the man's legs stopped thrashing. He climbed to his feet, fists flexing at his sides as he waited for the next attacker.

Blood ran down the Seifer's forehead onto his shirt, but the young man seemed unphased as he spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor. His gaze flickered across the crowd, landing on hers for a brief instant before another bar patron was on his back. Seifer twisted, grabbing the drunk's coat and throwing him into the crowd, which parted once again to allow their comrade access to the floor.

Quistis stood, stunned. Violence, she was used to, the motion of blood and shouts and broken bones almost antiseptic to her- clean and meaningless and often necessary. It was Seifer's gaze that chilled her. His eyes were narrowed, wild in a way she had never seen before, save in Edea's grasp. Even then, however, his rage had been fenced in, controlled by Ultimecia like a wind-up toy. Now, it lay bare in his eyes, roaring like fire, lips curled back in a hateful sneer.  He was going to kill one of them-

She crouched, rooted, mesmerized, and immobilized by the aftermath of memory still coursing through her veins. She pressed her hands to her temples, hard, trying desperately to smash out the thoughts that surfaced.

Blood, stairs, shouts, glass, snow- The images swirled too fast in her mind to make sense of them-

Two more advanced on Seifer, one catching him across the jaw in a clumsy but accurate uppercut. His head jerked back, but just as quickly, he spun, leading with his foot and tripping another man, catching the other man's gut with his elbow in a savage jab. It was when one jumped on Seifer from behind, however, that the momentum started to turn.  Seifer staggered back, and another man took the opportunity to shove his fist into his side.

Quistis blinked, as if coming awake.

She lunged forward, driving her shoulder into the man's side and sending him into the bar with a crash, knocking several glasses over, but more closed in. She nearly fell forward with the momentum, but Seifer's hand closed around her arm, jerking her back. His back was pressed against hers, heat and sweat from his body pouring into her own. There were too many men, at least thirty, and this too limited a space-

They exchanged a glance. Things were not looking up.

She saw him reach for Hyperion, then felt herself being lifted bodily up, darkness rising, and then-

Nothing.

…

…

…

Zell opened one eye, then the other. His hand, which, thank Hyne, seemed to be intact, was still closed around the barrel of Serabin's gun, and there was now a new hole in the roof of the training center.

Cerberus was snarling at Serabin.

Serabin was looking at Zell as if he was insane.

The older cadet blinked. "Are you insane?" shouted the Garden operator. "That…that _thing_ is an unaccounted for beast in the sanctuary, and was running around Garden, scaring the-"

"That _thing_ is a dog!" replied Zell. "Quistis' dog. And he's harmless."

Boy, he certainly wouldn't have said that earlier that morning.  Amazing the difference a few plates of hot dogs made.

"Harmless?" echoed Serabin, still staring at the snarling animal. "How can something with that many teeth be harmless?"

 "It's practically a puppy."

"A puppy? How would you know?" snapped Serabin, looking haughty.

"He's got a lot of energy? I dunno." Zell shrugged. "Well, I hear you can always check their teeth to see how old they are." Or maybe that was horses…

"Are you insane?"

"No, but he probably is." Replied Zell, gesturing at the enraged animal in front of him. "I wouldn't point that at him if I were you."

Slowly, Serabin lowered the barrel. "This _thing_ is Quistis'?"

Zell nodded.

"Well, tell Quistis she's going to have to register this…_creature_ with Cid. And put a collar on him or something. He looks like a Snow Lion gone wrong, not a pet."

"Will do!" said Zell, grinning as he saluted. "C'mon boy." The dog, amazingly, followed Zell's command and the pair exited-

Serabin sighed, glaring first at the exit and then at the new hole in the training center roof, which would have to be repaired immediately. "I'm getting too old for this."

                                                                                                              …

…

…

"Dog, you're a heart attack happening about every five minutes," Zell told the animal in front of him, who wagged his massive tail in response. Zell was fairly sure that tail, in full wagging throttle, could level a city or two.

Reaching behind him, Zell pulled out a long, pink silk ribbon, one that was about an inch and a half thick and belonged to Arya. She wouldn't miss it.

At least, hopefully she wouldn't.

She was none too happy the time that he'd stolen her silk scarf to use as an emergency knee brace after he'd crashed his t-board in the Quad, or the time he'd 'borrowed' her book collection as a skating ramp, or the time she'd unconsciously 'lent' him her supply of computer chips as throwing stars-

Hell, he didn't know why she put up with him sometimes.

The newly named 'Cerberus' seemed relatively happy to sit in a pile of skin and teeth and claws next to Zell, panting as he gazed around the Quad. Two long, dangling strings of drool roughly the size of limp white pencils swung from the dog's massive jaws. Frankly, it looked like the dog had swallowed a runner.

"Put a collar on him or something," Zell muttered, mimicking Serabin. He held the ribbon out, and, examining it, wound the ribbon across the dog's massive neck. The dog panted, seemingly unbothered by the contact or the ribbon. Zell attempted a sloppy tie around the neck, double-knotting the ribbon till it hung sloppily but firmly. The dog sniffed at it a minute, then looked back up at Zell, still panting and unimpressed with his new decoration.

It looked ridiculous. It was like putting a party hat on a T-Rexaur. Several cadets gave them second and third glances.

Zell couldn't stop laughing.

…

…

…

She opened her eyes to pain. Pain and the pungent scent of rotten banana and coffee grinds.

_Darkness…darkness and a single point of light humming overhead._

She tried to move, but felt resistance in every corner of her body. Her lip was wet, and her forehead was throbbing…the air was chilling her skin and there was something on top of her. She shoved, gasping for breath. The air was hot, stale, and she couldn't catch her breath. She couldn't move. She struggled again, choking on the air, the feeling of helplessness threatening to overcome her-

"Ow! Shit!"

She stilled the shoving motion of her hand, noticing that the movable object was warm…and breathing. She tensed up. "Seifer?" she asked, cautiously.

"Yeah." Came the answer. Her vision cleared, focusing onto red brick, cement, a collection of aluminum trash cans…and Seifer Almasy, sprawled out underneath her. She was practically straddling him, head pressed intimately against his chest and his leg wedged between both of hers. They were also, she took note, sprawled in a sea of garbage. It seemed that they'd been thrown unceremoniously out the back door after their impromptu bar fight, and had tumbled into the garbage cans. Disgusted, she peeled a soaked wrapper from her exposed arm- her careful plait in her hair was now shredded, and stunk of beer and spiced nuts. Coughing, Quistis raised her head, trying to clear her nose of the reeking odor of garbage. She took a deep breath- up here, the air smelled of dust, rotting wood and old limes. It was making her dizzy.

"How'd we get in here?" she asked, extremely aware of the way her hands were pressed up against him, firm muscle taut against her palms beneath his sweater. The side of her face was throbbing- there would be a bruise later.

"I wasn't exactly paying attention when they clubbed me over the head," he snapped, as he pulled a half-eaten sandwich off his shoulder. "Out with the trash. Fucking wonderful."

Quistis steeled her jaw. She was a SeeD, she had been in worse situations than this…

…but she had never felt as powerless before as she had ten minutes ago, caught in a drunken mob.

In one minute, the foundation of her existence as a soldier had been pulled beneath her, manifested in the groping hands of a drunken mob. Before, she'd always been able to predict the moves of her enemy…but not this one. They'd…she'd…she was so angry…furious….their hands had been everywhere, on her ass, on her…she'd been _frightened, dazed, immobilized_, and it infuriated her all the further- those damned memories floating up with every yank and dart of their hands.

"Quistis-" Seifer was sitting up, a look of almost-pity pinching his features.

She clenched her jaw. "Don't patronize me." If she could have, she'd have raised her chin. "I could have taken care of-"

"Yeah, sure you could have."

He was mocking her. She would have kicked him, if her feet weren't plunged into a pile of refuse.  "You can't handle everything on your own, you know." He continued.

"This from you." She spat, going rigid.

A pause. "Touché."

Silence ticked by between them, the exact amount impossible to measure in the dark.

"Sorry."

They said it in unison, both begrudgingly, the words as difficult to spit out as any love confession.

He smiled. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it in the air, in the way it lifted a little around her and made the strangling feeling in her throat lift just a little. She felt all right, here, with Seifer, as if his arrogance and bull-headedness could keep everything at bay. If she was knee-deep in shit, at least it was here, with him.  It must have been the way Rinoa, felt, once.

_What_ was she thinking?

A pause. "What do you suggest we do now?" He was asking her opinion? Had he hit his head?

"Do you have Hyperion with you?"

A sigh. "No, the fucking mob took it."

Seifer's face was covered with blood on the right side, probably from the bottle broken on his head. His eyes were guarded, seemingly untroubled, the bright jade hardened and holding the lights in defensive points. He looked terrible.

It was her medic training that made her care, she told herself.

And yet, she'd seen a glance of what his life must have been like in the last two years. Running, constantly being recognized and hated, and fighting just to stay alive. She'd never seen anyone fight that way before, like each hit only doubled his rage and his resolve to live. Their hatred was probably all he'd ever felt these past years, and that had become his driving emotion- his fuel for life. And she was finding that she was starting to care what drove him…too much. She reached up, curling her sweater over her fist and pressing the supple wool to his forehead, softly sponging away the blood that trickled down.

Jumping slightly at the contact, his eyes focused on her. Quistis' face was bruised and slightly swollen, flushing blue from the ruptured capillaries trickling down her pretty cheek. Her eyes were troubled, distant, as if scrambling for her bearings in the dark closet. He'd turned in the noisy bar, only to see her kicking and yelling like a crazy woman, eyes lit with panic as they grabbed her hair and forced her head back, her sweater sleeve ripped and sloping down her arm. He'd never seen Trepe panicked before, and to see her there, thrashing and _afraid_, the same woman who had faced off against him without breaking a sweat-

He'd wanted to kill them-

Without thinking, he reached up and gently, gently, cupped her swollen cheek, running the pad of his thumb across the edge of her eye to find a slight amount of moisture there beneath the lashes. Was she crying? Impossible. Quisty had cried at the orphanage, sobbed when things broke or when people were mean. SeeD Quistis had never cried, at least not that he could tell. Somewhere between childhood and womanhood, Quistis Trepe seemed to have lost all of her tears.

He wondered, not for the first time, where and how she had spent all of them.

Quistis looked at Seifer with a mix of shock and bewilderment, and he was looking back at her with a similar look on his face. Just as quickly, however, he dropped his hand. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed between them, and Quistis, seeming to come awake, got to her feet, dusting off her pants. Seifer followed suit.

The cool air whipped at her hair, and when he looked at her, she seemed more composed, more…distant. She checked her watch, and sighed. "We've missed the train."

Seifer stretched, each snap of his spine a refreshing release of tension. "There are other trains."

She was looking at him, giving him an incommunicable glance. "_What_ other trains?"

He shrugged. "Just…trains. But they won't be coming along for an hour yet," he replied.

She peered at him, studying the crimson spatter of dried blood that surrounded the cut on the side of his head. His cheek was bruised, and she was sure there were more injuries that his clothes were hiding. "You look terrible."

"Gee, thanks. You look like a walking ad for an ice pack yourself." He paused and sniffed the arm of his sweater. "And we _both_ stink."

She opened her mouth to reply when suddenly, a figure sprung from a clump of nearby bushes, causing them both to jump. He stumbled clumsily onto the sidewalk, muttering to himself. The short, squat little man, obviously very drunk, brandished a very familiar silver sword in his hands. "Gimme all yer gil!" he shouted, teetering to one side. "Ah'm uh, shoresheresh knife!" He made an unsteady pose in the alley, trying to look menacing but succeeding only in looking more foolish.

Quistis folded her arms and looked amused. Seifer just scowled.

"Lookee me! I got mashic pewers an shord shkills! Treeeeeemble before-"

A punch sent the man sprawling backwards, sword flying. Seifer caught the tumbling blade by the handle and slipped the sword into the loop on his belt before pulling the trench coat over it.

Both Seifer and Quistis stepped over the now unconscious drunk as if nothing at all had just occurred.

He glanced over at her. "You hungry?"

She yawned. "I could eat something, I suppose." As Seifer's smile, she scowled. "NOT chocobo wings."

"I know a place."

They walked in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts and the spread of stars above them.

"Out of what can only be described as _morbid_ curiosity, Seifer, where are we going _this_ time?"

"Relax." replied Seifer, turning the corner. "I can guarantee that this place doesn't have any poles."

The young blonde looked unconvinced. "Then what's it called?"

Seifer rubbed his head where the blood had dried. "I don't remember. It's been a while. I think it's the Horny Panda or something." He turned around to see Quistis starting to walk in the opposite direction. "Hey come on, I was kidding!"

Lunging, he grabbed her hand, and dragged her back. "Come on. Hyne. It's this placed owned by a guy I've known for awhile. He's crazy, but the food's really good."

"We don't have any money," she stated. Her bag was gone, although it had contained little more than a transmitter. The transmitter could be disconnected from the com system. It was the principal of the thing, she supposed.

"He wouldn't take it anyway."

"How do you know him?" Quistis was extremely conscious of the fact that Seifer hadn't released her hand. Seifer, meanwhile, was fighting an internal battle. Let go of her hand? But he'd already held it longer than propriety required….letting go now would mean admitting it meant more than it did. Although, on the other hand, not letting it go could make it seem like more than it was. Disgusted with himself, Seifer decided to stop thinking like a damned woman and just hold her hand, since it was what he wanted to do anyway.

He shrugged. "Back in my old Garden days, I used to sneak out past curfew all the time. I suppose you could say that Old Man Chu and I just sorta…ran into each other. Either that or the old fucker was following me," he muttered. "Either explanation is possible."

The pair walked in silence for a while, considering the stars and the warmth of the other's hand with an uneasy comfort.

Old man Chu's place was a small little brick square nestled in the very heart of the city, a dimly lit place with crepe lanterns and black shutters. Small bamboo shoots were lined up along the windowsill.

"The Crazy Bamboo." Read Quistis aloud. "What kind of a name is _that_?"

"I dunno. What kind of a name is Quistis?"

"Ha ha." She glanced in the window. "Is it open?"

"It's always open." Still gripping her hand, Seifer opened the door and stepped through, pulling her up the stairs after him. The old man kept his place open well into the evening, and being a nocturnal person himself, Seifer had stumbled upon it many years ago. The guy really _was_ crazy, but that didn't bother Seifer. In fact, he found psychosis to be more interesting than most other personality traits, and strangely more predictable. Sane people were always subject to change. Insane people remained fairly consistent.

"Hey, Chu?"

The restaurant was set up simply, a dusky, elegant atmosphere with soft paper lamps and knee-high oiled wood tables. Small woven mats decorated the floor, and a large iron horse rearing back on his haunches regarded the pair with a wild, gaping expression.

Quistis peered over Seifer's shoulder. "It doesn't look as if anyone's here."

"SHINDEEEEEEEE!"

Suddenly, a blur burst from the fake emerald confinements of a fake potted plant and flew at Seifer, sending him sprawling through a thin paper screen and tumbling into a rack of dishes.

"Seifer!" Quistis looked through the now shattered screen to see Seifer getting to his feet, a little man in a red robe no taller than Selphie brandishing a cane staff, and advancing on Seifer with it. Seifer glanced over at her, putting a hand up. "It's okay, Quis. This is Chu."

"_That's_ Chu? The man who's trying to kill you?" echoed Quistis, standing with her hands on her hips as the two men crashed into another rack of dishes. She noticed that Seifer didn't try to draw Hyperion, however, so instead of interfering, she stood in the doorway and folded her arms, leaning against the paneling.

She sighed. Could this night get any more bizarre?

_Probably._

Seifer ducked as the old man swiped at him with the staff. The old man was surprisingly nimble for a man of his apparent age, and the wooden pole crashed into an ancient-looking dish, sending the pieces crumbling to the floor.

"Kisama wo te no nai de korosu yo!" Shouted the old man, circling Seifer around one of the mahogany tables and still wielding the bamboo stick like a machete.

Seifer just shook his head, smiling. "Come on, Chu. Is that any way to treat an old friend?" The ex-knight was forced to duck as the staff once again whirred above his head, smashing into a large antique plate.

Quistis watched the exchange, dumfounded. _This_ was an old friend? What, then, did Seifer consider an enemy?

Seifer backed into the wall, grasping an antique katana and whirling, ducking as the old man threw an array of saucers through the air- each smashed into the wall behind him with enough force to stick. Quistis let out a yell and ducked as one saucer missed her ear by a hair's width.

Seifer whirled, quickly drawing another antique sword from the wall and, bracing his foot against the painted plaster, pushed off, over a table and behind the old man. The man turned as well, dropping the bamboo cane and drawing two knives from his waistband. Quistis put a hand over her eyes.

Silence.

Peeking out between her fingers, she could see Seifer holding out the two swords, each blade resting against either side of the mysterious man's neck. The man, however, held his two knives up towards Seifer's throat as well, the metal just nicking the skin. Both men were short of breath.

Suddenly, each man dropped their weapon, and broke into laughter. Quistis stared, open-mouthed, as the old man grinned and embraced Seifer in a hearty hug, clapping his back.

"Baka wakamono!  Hisashiburi da ne?"he shouted, jovially.

Seifer just grinned and pulled back. "You haven't changed at all, you old bastard."

Chu winked. "Ganbatta yo.  Omae wa?"

The young man shook his head. "Hontou ni wa…"

The wound in Seifer's head had reopened, and the old man was sporting the beginnings of a very nasty black eye. Quistis was still staring open-mouthed at the peculiar scene before her when the old man glanced over at her, his slanted obsidian eyes observing her as keenly as a rat.

"Kono onna no kata wa dare ka?"he asked.

Seifer gestured towards her, bowing a little. "Quistis."

The old man approached, taking the flustered young woman's hand and brushing it respectfully with his lips, giving her a wink. He reminded her of the man back in Tromedia, old and cunning. "Kirei naa!  Omae no?"

The earned a full-fledged laugh from the young man. "Heh. Hontou ni wa."

Quistis smiled uneasily, unsure of what the two found so amusing. Although she had taken some courses in other languages and dialects, she could make out only about fifteen percent of what he and the old man were saying, not nearly enough to get even a vague idea of what they were talking about. It was irritating.

Old man Chu released Quistis' hand and stepped back, bowing quickly. "You go! Sit down! I make something. And take off shoes! This is not barn! Seifer, you know better."

Muttering, the old man disappeared into what Quistis guessed was the kitchen, and the banging pots and pans started up almost immediately.

Seifer stretched, yawned, and plopped onto one of the small crimson pillows that lined the rich wood tables after both he and Quistis had removed their shoes. The wound on his forehead was dripping blood down the side of his face, soaking into the black of his turtleneck.

Quistis joined him, reluctantly, still glancing at the kitchen with a suspicious gleam in her eye. "Who is he?"

"An old friend."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Do _all_ your old friends try to kill you?"

He shrugged. "You'd be surprised."

She had no response for that.  None that would make light of the situation, anyway. "How did you meet him?"

"A few years…we have sort of a history together."

"I guessed as much from your welcome." She settled her chin on her fist, gazing at him out of the corner of her eye. As a trained field medic, his wounds were really beginning to get on her nerves. Grasping a lukewarm, rolled towel from one of the bowls on the table, she leaned over and pressed one of the soft terry cloths to his forehead. He jerked back, hissing.

"Ow! Hyne, woman!" He glared at her.

She glared back. "Just hold still. Why do you men insist on sitting and bleeding? Does it expand your egos?" She inched forward, once again pressing the cloth to his forehead.

"Hyne, why don't you rub my fucking face off, Mom?" he snapped. But he sat and endured her ministrations.

"Stop being such a baby," she snapped, but she was suppressing a smile. In the hearts of all grown men, she was convinced there lurked a little boy still afraid of the sting of antiseptic.

Quistis reached for the bowl, rinsing the blood soaked cloth in a class of water before applying it back to his forehead, grabbing his cheek to tilt his head towards her. "I don't have any potions with me, Seifer, and casting is impossible for me right now."

He flinched, and she chuckled. "Would you like me to kiss it and make it better?" she asked, wryly.

"Would you?" His eyes met hers, and she could feel her cheeks getting warm. It should be illegal for a man's eyes to be so pretty, she thought, and lowered her hands, turning away.

He was still looking at her. "Here. Keep pressure on the cut." She muttered, turning away just as the old man walked into the room with a tray full of steaming food. A bowl filled with rice, bowls of hot soup, and several plates of other strange-looking dishes made Quistis' stomach rumble. The old man winked at the two as he set down the food, then scurried off to the kitchen again.

"Is it poisoned?" she muttered to Seifer as the banging in the kitchen resumed. A swear of cusses followed another crash of dishes.

"Could be," he replied, lifting a pair of chopsticks and lifting a large bite of noodles to his lips. "Wouldn't put it past the sneaky old bastard."

Quistis examined the two wooden sticks in front of her, glancing over at Seifer as he easily used the utensils to lift another bite to his mouth. Well, if Seifer was eating, why not? She was too hungry to care. She had been involved in a bar fight, dumped in garbage, and spent the day in the slums. Poisoning seemed to take a distant second.

Copying the crude placement of Seifer's hands, she lifted the stick shovel towards her plate, trying to grasp a piece of seaweed-rolled rice with crab meat tucked in the center. The sticks slipped, sending the piece of food rolling across the table. Seifer glanced over at her. "Need help?"

She shot him a dirty look. "No, I'm doing just fine, thank you. Don't they have forks here?" she muttered.

Chuckling, Seifer turned back to a bowl of soup. Quistis frowned, and repositioned her grip. She wasn't used to being the one unfamiliar with protocol, and she certainly didn't enjoy being unfamiliar in front of Seifer.

Seifer Almasy was unfamiliar territory all by himself.

Seifer watched with amusement as another piece of sushi rolled across the table. He followed the trail of spilled rice across the countertop to see Quistis once again glaring at the sticks. "Here," he said, reaching over and grasping her hand, readjusting her fingers between his own. Was she blushing again? He closed her fingers somewhat awkwardly, sandwiching the piece of food between the two sticks and watching her raise it towards her lips, her cheeks still tinted pink. It would have been charming…if not for the nasty bruise that flushed up the side of her cheek, the vicious swelling in her eye, and the sloping sleeves of her sweater, ripped open to reveal bruises in the shape of finger marks on her skin. Still, she seemed collected now, more together than the frail creature that had shivered in the dark of the club alley and thrashed like a wounded animal in the thick of the mob. He didn't delude himself that it was the fight that had set her off kilter. Quistis was a top SeeD- she had seen much worse then a drunken bar brawl. No, she had been afraid, and he knew it went beyond the push and pull of the crowd around her.

Now, however, she was chewing with her cheeks stuffed with sushi, smiling a little as she swallowed. "It's good." She had a piece of rice on her lip. It was distracting.

Chu joined them then, squatting down onto one of the mats across from them. "How is everything?" he asked, a pleasant smile on his face and in a language Quistis could understand.

The pair nodded, their mouths full.

"Ah! Good. You eat more!" Chu reached over, grabbing a bowl of rice and gracefully lifting bite after bite to his lips in a scooping motion. "And here is potion. You put on cuts!" The old man set a small vial on the table. "Also, you stink." The old man sprayed some sort of aerosol over them, and soon the garbage smell was somewhat masked in a heavy pine scent.

Satisfied, the old man set the spray down. "So Seifer, you are back at Garden now, yes?"

Seifer nodded, reluctantly.

"Good place for you!" exclaimed the old man, digging back into his bowl. "Yes, very important…back at Garden…" His voice trailed off meditatively, and both Seifer and Quistis were left to wonder what thoughtful note lingered in the wake of his words.

"Tch," muttered Seifer, digging into a bowl of noodles once more. "Chu here thinks he can see the future."

Chu just chuckled, pouring the tea. "I do not see future, exactly- more like possibilities. You might say is a trait that runs in my family. For example, I predict Seifer will leave table soon."  He winked again at Quistis, a gesture that slightly entranced and unnerved her simultaneously. There was more to this man than a restaurant and a strange penchant for killing the young ex-knight next to her, she thought. Still, she found herself developing a vague liking to the old man, against her better judgment.

"Senile bunch of mumbo jumbo shit if you ask-ow! Whad da hewl wud dat for!" Chu's hand had shot out, smacking Seifer directly in the nose.

Seifer stood up, swearing to himself as he held his nose. Blood seeped out between his fingers, and he cast Chu a dangerous look, stomping into the kitchen to get a towel for his face.

"All your talk of what you know nothing!" Chu broke into laughter. "See? Prediction right!" he shouted back. He turned back to Quistis, chuckling. "A puppy, that one. All bark and no bite."

Quistis shook her head. 'Puppy' was not quite the word she would use to describe her old student. "You seem to have quite an extensive history together, Mr. Chu," she observed.

"You might say," replied the old man, handing her a small porcelain cup. "Seifer ran into me long time ago, still a little boy with big dream. He and I had big run-in, but now, you might say I 'owe him one'." The old man chuckled, a far away look in his eye. "He set me free, how you say, although on young Seifer's part it was pure accident."

Quistis frowned.

Chu continued. "Now Seifer, alas, is young man, with no dreams. Amazing, the cycle of pride, ne? Like life. Like a heartbeat. Strange cycle." The old man took a thoughtful sip of his tea.

Quistis wasn't sure what to make of the new conversation topic. She took a sip of the tea offered, and instantly, her chest filled with a warm flush, the liquid clearing her senses. What was in it?

"You and Seifer…yours is also a long history, is it not, Ms. Trepe?"

The young woman nodded. "You might say that."

"You grew up together?"

Quistis frowned. "Did Seifer tell you that?"

The restaurant owner just smiled. "Seifer says more than realizes, I think."

"Yes, we grew up together, at an orphanage. Our paths have…crossed since then, several times." Replied Quistis. More like _collided_. Never mind that the encounters had rarely been pleasant. Someone like Chu probably knew the details of the second sorceress war as well as she herself did. The old man seemed full of knowledge, both apparent and secret.

Chu nodded. "Yes. And will cross again. All you children…what they call you, Liberi Fatali…your path cross like star's light…" The gleam in his eye was unnerving, and gazing into his black gaze, Quistis could almost believe the man's far-fetched claim of clairvoyance for an instant, as if his knowledge spanned generations past and future. For an instant, Quistis was not sure if she was staring into human eyes at all.

Realizing she was rudely staring, she looked down. This Chu was a fascinating individual. Unnerving, but fascinating.

"What is this called?" she asked, setting down her cup after another long sip.

The old man grinned again. "Sake," he replied, refilling her cup. "Is like tea. You want more?"

"Yes, please," replied Quistis. There was an unmistakable twinkle in Chu's eyes as he poured her another cup.

Silence descended between the two, neither uncomfortable nor comfortable. It was simply thoughtful- two people considering each other.

"You know, Miss. Trepe, world is full of cycles. Life, pride…power…as many cycles as there are forces in the world. Cycles can improve, or they can become worse. Each cycle dependant on those around it, each cycle changed by the alterations in its conduits. In this sense, cycles can be _changed_. Future can be changed."

She frowned. "I'm sorry, Mr. Chu, but I'm afraid I don't follow what you're saying."

 "You will."

She frowned.

His eyes sparkled, suddenly.  "You are an interesting woman, Ms. Trepe. Yours will be interesting future." Quistis stared at him, dumbfounded, as Chu held up his cup as if toasting her, and she stared at the shine of light on the smooth, painted porcelain. A glimmer wavered in his eye, the dark almond sheen glistening crimson for a moment, and instantly, recognition coursed through her veins. The curved, almost sinister cut of his smile, the ancient crimson glow of his eyes-

"_Odin_?" she whispered, swaying in her seat.

The old man simply smiled and winked, pouring another cup of tea just as Seifer walked in. Quistis frowned, looking back down at her plate and studying the smooth, polished sheen of the table. The light seemed to waver on it.

What the hell was _in_ this tea?

The three stayed up for the next few hours, discussing old times spent in Balamb. The potion numbed her wounds, and she could feel the swelling receding. Quistis found herself actually relaxing, whether from the warm tea or the company. It was a happy warmth that filled the room…one that the two young soldiers had not felt in far too long. Even Quistis' strange epiphanies about the old man vanished in light of another cup of the strange brew.

After awhile, however, both became conscious of the time. "Thanks for everything, Chu." Said Seifer, standing. "We've got to get going, though."

"Ah, no, Seifer, it is I who thank you." Said Chu, bowing. "It is lovely to meet you, Quistis. You think about what I said, yes?"

She nodded, smiling dazedly as she exited.  Seifer rolled his eyes and helped her down the stairs. The girl had drunk far too much sake.

Chu turned back to Seifer, punching him in the arm as Seifer's hand rested on the door. "Baka!  Hoshi wa te ni korobanai.  Hoshi wo toraete ne?" He gestured at the young woman through the screen door.

Seifer just shook his head, smiling a little. "You're a meddling old bastard, Chu." He said, as the screen door slammed shut behind him.

"You think about it," called Chu after him, watching as the two young people disappeared from view.  His eyes glinted crimson in the moonlight, and for a brief instant, the man in the doorway seemed to transcend the neon lights and dark alleyways around him.

He chuckled. The 'cycle' was already under way. The screen door banged shut behind him.

…

…

"Niveus. The white knight." She said quietly, gesturing up at a cluster of stars farther south.

The two walked along the beach, arms folded to keep out the cold. The ocean curdled under the moonlight, each wave capped with a sparkle of light from the stars.

"What?"

"Niveus." Repeated Quistis, gesturing with her fingertips along an arc with a few stars along a gently sloping diagonal. "And Xenus, his sword." She closed her eyes, getting a fleeting vision of being stretched out on a plaid picnic blanket, watching the stars, Matron and Seifer and Ellone beside her. She, Ellone, and Seifer were the night owls among the children, and Matron would sometimes take them outside for stargazing. Seifer was subdued during those times, not troubled, not angry…she'd enjoyed those times immensely.

Seifer followed her random gesture in the sky. "If you say so," he replied.

He doesn't remember…

She tottered a little, nearly tripping over a piece of driftwood. "It's too dark out here."

He grinned. "No, you just had too much sake."

She glowered at him. "Well, it isn't as if either of you told me it was alcoholic until after I'd already had about four cups," she grumbled.

"Killed the bug up your ass, didn't it?"

She glared at him. It had killed her coordination as well.

"Oh come on, you had fun."

"I suppose, under the circumstances, I was _mildly_ entertained." Quistis frowned as she glanced at her watch. "It's almost three in the morning." She sighed. "We've probably missed the train again."

"There'll be another one."

Quistis stopped, hands on hips. "Where are you getting all these trains from, anyway?"

"Supply trains," replied Seifer. "They're constantly winding from AmmuCorp all over the place. I always caught one of those back to Garden when I used to sneak out."

Quistis resumed walking. "Seifer Almasy, man of mystery," she mused, smiling. Seifer glanced over at her, noticing the slight chatter of her teeth. Small wonder, with her sweater nearly torn to shreds and sloping around her arms, baring her skin to the wind. He shrugged out of his jacket, draping it around her shoulders. Instantly, she opened her mouth to protest, just as he knew she would, but he put up his hand.

"If you go into hypothermia, I'll have to carry you back. Think of it as practicality, not chivalry." He said, smiling. He had learned to persuade Quistis where it worked- reason, not sentiment.

"Fine, but don't start opening doors for me…I might have a heart attack." She muttered, only increasing his grin. "Where do you plan on catching this train?"

He pointed up the beach. "Though that park, along the beach. It comes by randomly, so be ready to run."

"You can't mean we're going train chasing!" she exclaimed.

"Don't think of it as train chasing…think of it as 'making our own transportation'."

"Oh, right, just like dying is really only relocating to basement property." She replied bitterly. "All in the interpretation, right?"

He laughed out loud at that one. "Oh, come on, Trepe, where's your sense of adventure?"

"I didn't drink _that_ much sake," she grumbled.

"What a shame," he mused.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, Seifer looking thoughtfully out to sea and Quistis staring at the path ahead. They came to the park shortly after, and Quistis dropped down into a swing on a rusted swing set, tucking her feet under her while the rest of the trench coat spilled off the sides onto the grass. The empty swings clattered together, the ring of the chains eerie in the dark as that pair listened for the far off sound of a train. The wind was cold and hollow, whispering and howling through the grass and rusted metal.

It was a place that promoted remembering, and the memories themselves were less than warm.

"I blamed myself." She said, after a time, almost too quietly for him to hear.

He turned to look at her, the wind blowing his short blonde hair down onto his forehead.  "What?"

She looked ahead, not sure why she was bringing it up but knowing that she had to. "That day on the train…to Timber. Before it all started. When you left. I…blamed myself. If I had been a better Instructor…I wouldn't have lost you."

He narrowed his eyes. "Nobody lost me but **me**, Trepe."

She shook her head. "I just couldn't help thinking…what if I had done something different? What if-"

"I'd have pushed you away harder. What the hell good is 'what if' Trepe? I made my own decisions, just like you made yours."

Quistis was silent, gripping the chains of the swings as she stared into the distance. "But, what if-"

Seifer glowered down at her. "Don't you think I wondered '_what if'_ every day for the last two years? Do you think if I could go back and do it differently now, I would? I wasted the last two years of my life on 'what if', and I'm probably just wasting my time here, but the hell else is there?"

"Where did you go?" she asked, quietly. "What did you do?"

He sighed, dropping into one of the swings beside her and resting his hands in his lap. "Everywhere. Nowhere." He muttered. "Did odd jobs. Slept on the ground. Screwed everything that offered. Tried to die, mostly." He looked at her.

 "I never wished you that, even in your worst moments."  She said quietly.

"You should have."

_Why do you have to make this so hard, Quistis,_ he asked himself, glaring at her in the moonlight. _Why the hell do you still believe in me, after all this time? Things would be so much easier…I could give up, finally…if you didn't believe in me…_

He gripped the chains of the swing in an almost white-knuckle grip. "You're like Chu, aren't you? You think things happen for a reason and all that bullshit."

"Not exactly. I think there are reasons for the way things happen. Cause and effect." She replied.

He scoffed. "What, like a butterfly beats its wings and some guy's heart stops?"

"Something like that, although not nearly as random." Replied Quistis. "As a soldier…I think you have to believe that."

"Why?" It almost sounded like a challenge.

"Because if things were predestined, it wouldn't do any good to fight, would it?" Chu's words came back to her. Changing cycles….

He shrugged.

She looked curiously at him. "What do _you_ think?"

"Who knows? People make decisions and shit happens. Maybe some people are meant to be heroes, and some people are meant to be failures." He tilted his head back, glaring up at the spread of stars, a stern expression on his face. For a moment, he could have been that young boy again, stargazing.

Quistis didn't have to guess which one Seifer considered himself.

"That sounds remarkably like fate," she replied.

Seifer shrugged. "Call it what you want. Like I said. People make decisions. If people really could go back and change what they did, the future would probably just figure out a new way of doing the exact same fucking thing anyway."

Quistis shook her head. "I don't believe in destiny. If there was really any such thing as destiny, then people theoretically wouldn't have the will to fight."

He chuckled, bitterly. "But that's hope, isn't it, Trepe? It gives people the illusion that they can change what's already set in motion. It gives them the will to fight, it doesn't _validate_ their fighting. It doesn't make anybody a fucking hero. It just makes them a fool with delusions of grandeur."

She frowned. "Then why fight, Seifer?"

He shrugged. "Something to do."

Neither of them believed him.

It was strange, sitting here discussing philosophy with Seifer Almasy. It was a situation she certainly wouldn't have predicted years ago, when he sat in the back of her classroom making paper airplanes and falling asleep. Then again, perhaps things changed. She studied his profile in the moonlight.

_And maybe_, she thought, _so do people._

"Do you think about the future, Seifer?" she asked.

His gaze never wavered from the stars. "Not anymore."

She pulled the lapels of the trench coat more securely around her. It smelled like Seifer, warm and male and a bit disconcerting in the way it made her senses react. It was a foreign feeling. "What was it like, when you did?"

He turned to look down at her, eyes defensive and his expression curious as to why she'd asked the question. Really, she didn't know herself.  "I dunno. Probably screwing a lot of women and going out in a blaze of glory. Something stupid fucked up thing like that." His expression softened just slightly. "What about you, Trepe?"

"It's silly." She said, shaking her head. "You'll laugh."

"I won't." He said, looking solemn.

A pause. He was finally speaking with her; it was only fair she did the same.  Plus, there was the fact that she was half-drunk and too removed to care. "All right." She agreed. "I don't know. I guess I always saw the 'future' as having my license back and having a house on the ocean someday for summer leaves. One with a back porch, and a dog that could sit at my feet at night."

"Looks like you already have the dog." He pointed out.

She laughed a little like that. "Yes, I suppose so. Not quite the dog I was expecting."

He was still looking at her, gaze intent. "What, no knight in shining armor in this future of yours?" he asked. "I always figured you for a romantic, Trepe."

Her smiled faded. "No."

"Why not?" He wasn't sure why it mattered, but it did.

_No knight in shining armor was coming to save her…._

_No knight ever would…_

She blinked.  Her eyes met his. "Because it's silly to think that way," she replied tonelessly.

"Why?" he asked.

She looked away, and didn't respond. Her hands gripped the chain links of the swing tightly.

"Quistis."

He grabbed the chain of her swing suddenly, hauling her closer to him. Their sides touched, and she looked up at him, not exactly sure what she was expecting to find. His eyes were narrowed, just slightly, the green orbs intent and focused.

"Why is it silly to think that way?" he asked, softly, just inches from her.

A train whistle sounded in the distance, causing both to jump to attention. Without another word, Seifer grabbed her hand and pulled her up before he broke into a sprint, running through the empty playground with her behind him as the sound steadily approached. She stumbled unsteadily behind him, trying to gain her bearings as they raced along.

"Come on, Trepe!" he shouted, looking behind him, an almost gleefully boyish look on his face. "We've got a train to catch!"

…

…

"What an adorable dog!" exclaimed Arya, kneeling down to rub Cerberus underneath the chin.

Zell just rolled his eyes. Leave it to Arya to call a dog like that adorable. "Yeah, he sure is." He said, sitting down on his bed to remove his boots. Arya had gotten back from the mission around midnight, and had stopped by to say hello before she went to bed. So far though, the dog had gotten more attention than he had.

"Stay the night?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow and offering her the infamous Dincht grin that usually got him…well nothing, really. But it didn't hurt to use all of one's…one…asset.

She gave him a scrutinizing glare. "I don't like that look in your eye, Zell Dincht."

"Aw, come on, babe! To sleep!" he insisted, patting the spot beside him, still grinning.

Arya smiled. "All right. Let me go get my things from my room and I'll sneak back if I can, okay? Serabin's been a real stickler about curfew lately. I swear, the man doesn't sleep, he just roams the halls…"

"You have no idea." Agreed Zell.

Arya stooped down, giving him a quick kiss before she patted Cerberus and walked out the door, hitting the red button. Just as the door commenced closing, her eyes widened. "Zell Dinct! That had better not be my ribbo-"

Too late. The door had locked behind her.

Zell cringed. Arya was far too observant for his own good.

Suddenly, a lumbering object hopped onto the bed beside him, nearly knocking him off. Cerberus yawned, spattering drool all over Zell's pillow, then contentedly laid his massive head down on it.

Zell frowned. "Oh no, you're not sleeping here, dog." Shoving, he attempted to push the dog off the mattress-

And wound up on the floor himself.

Several more tries only yielded the same results, and finally, Zell gave up, taking the small sliver of mattress and blanket that the canine lummox wasn't taking up. Arya never returned, whether due to Serabin or the fact that he'd robbed her closet again, and Zell Dinct wound up spending the night with a 175 lb, dark-haired companion that snored and had breath like a waste treatment facility.

It was an improvement on some of his dates before Arya…however, a lumbering mongrel with dog breath was hardly an improvement from the lovely dark-haired girl that normally shared the small SeeD's mattress with him.

_This day was a 24 hour train wreck,_ decided Zell, grasping his covers tightly to his chest as he rolled over and went to sleep.                        

…

…

"This is insane!" shouted Quistis, doing her best to keep up with Seifer and keep track of the train as it thundered past him. "_You're_ insane!"

Seifer didn't hear her or chose to ignore her, however, and turned back to gesture back at a red car that was approaching far too fast. "This one!" he shouted. The thunder of the wheels was making it difficult to think, and Hyne, she was beginning to hate trains. The wheels were cranking along below, and she knew slipping would be like falling head first into a meat grinder, and why, oh why, did she drink so much sake-

Before she could protest Seifer's cabin choice, however, he saw the red car pass, too fast, and Seifer take a nearly suicidal leap aboard. Without thinking, she lunged. Her coordination was off, timing was off-

Not enough momentum. She was going to fall-

Something grabbed her and she tumbled forward, crashing against the side of the car. She opened her eyes to see Seifer grinning up at her, still breathing hard underneath her.

Seifer panted. "Never knew you liked to be on top, Trepe."

"Seifer Almasy," she shouted, pummeling him in the chest, "Of all the **stupid** things-"

He rolled to his feet from under her, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "Fun, wasn't it?"

She glared at him, spitting hair out of her mouth. "**NO**!"

He got to his feet, walking over to the edge of the car and settling down on the edge, dangling his feet off of the side.  He was chuckling, patting the area next to him. "Come on, Trepe, live a little!"

She approached the side of the car, looking uneasily at the spinning ground below. "Your version of living is too close to death for my liking. This train had better go to Garden."

"Oh, it does. And you know what the best part is?"

"I'm afraid to ask," replied Quistis dryly, gripping the side rail of the car door tightly, the metal cold against her hand.

His smile never wavered. "We still have to get off."

Grumbling, she sat down beside him, still gripping the door. "So help me Hyne, Seifer Almasy, if I die on this damned train I will come back to haunt you every waking moment of the rest of your life."

"Even in the shower?"

Quistis rolled her eyes in response. "I said I'd haunt _you_, not myself."

"Har har."

"Is your mind always in the gutter?" she snapped.

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

She glared at him in response, still maintaining her death grip on the boxcar's handle.

"Let go, Trepe," he insisted, chuckling. "Just enjoy the view."

Still concentrating on her balance and the earth whirling past her underneath her feet, she managed to glance up for a moment, and caught her breath at the beauty. The ocean stretched out in front of them with starlight spilled across it, and the grasses in the now open fields outside Balamb seemed to whisper in the wind.

Here, sitting next to Seifer under a traveling moon, it was like gazing out at the orphanage sky again, this time with slightly tainted eyes. And if they had not been children even then, they were certainly less so now. Seifer gazed at the stars like an old man at nearly twenty-one, harboring more regrets in his young years than most old men could have gathered in a lifetime.

She saw a faint glimmer in his eyes and watched as the wind tousled his hair like stalks of golden wheat, the bullion wisps streaked with moonlight. She glanced at him, and for once, did not see the glaring scar that marked all that was bad in him or the self-defensive smirk held up like a shield to repel others.

Just Seifer.

His eyes were like an emerald mercury in the shadows of twilight, a swimming, unstable jewel that glittered in the dark. His lips were turned up in the faintest of a smile, and she knew he was remembering something, some far away sunlight tucked deep within the dark of his memories. He should smile like that more often. It was a real smile, not the smirk he put up to mask himself from the world. It must have been how he had smiled before everything, before the orphanage and before the war, how he had smiled at a family that loved him, or at memories that had been pleasant and warm.

His eyes were half closed, arms folded across his knees bent at the edge of the train, and his feet braced on the rail. Both of them unguarded, she was free to look past him, to delve behind the scars and actually read his posture rather than his markings. Seifer Almasy's scars had always preceded him, but now, to look at him, he seemed only a man, not the monster or a rebel she had once constructed in her mind.

She pushed herself back from the edge of the boxcar, tucking her feet underneath her and leaning against the cold metal side of the car, the feeling of exhaustion overtaking her. Sighing, she lifted the edge of the jacket up enough so that her wrist pressed against the cool metal of the train, easing the burning in her arm that was the result of her panicked casting attempt.

Her eyes slid almost shut, the light, elusive feeling of an almost-calm settling over her like a piece of tissue paper. The light, familiarly disturbed sleep of a mercenary. Seifer would wake her when the train neared Garden, and would do so with more warning than with which he'd boarded the train this time. Either that, or she'd choke the life out of him in keeping with the years she'd already lost off of hers aboard the rusting vessel.

_What a day._

She settled her head down, her cheek cupped in her fist as her eyes shut the rest of the way. The train rumbled beneath her, soothing like a heartbeat, and her last coherent thoughts were of Chu's words to her.

_If life balanced on the oscillation of a single heartbeat…_

These past few beats of her own had cost her dearly, she feared.

…

…

…

Seifer's thoughts, contrary to Quistis' belief, were not far away from the red boxcar. Quite close, in fact.

He knew what it felt like to lose one's purpose, to feel the tether snap of intention burst like an artery and sail up in the wind like a lost kite, dripping life at a staggering pace. He had watched hope sail up like a balloon, and wished it gone forever. Now, suddenly, by some miracle of Hyne knew what, he found the string returned to him, some ethereal kite pulling him towards something…towards sunlight, towards the promise of what might be happiness amidst all the chaos of his young life, of what exactly he didn't have a fucking clue. But it didn't feel like dread anymore, whatever it was. Some purpose was waiting for him, but the kite string still held no kite. He couldn't place it…not yet.

Not quite a new lease on life, but someday was a start.

He sighed, taking hold of the rail as the train banked around another curve and making sure that Trepe didn't roll out.

What a long day. Looking back on it made little to no sense. They'd found out virtually nothing about the children, and yet, he was more suspicious than ever. It didn't make sense. And the IGCS…well, it was almost as if someone knew they were coming…but that was impossible. The mission briefing was compiled at the last second, and the operative was dispatched a day early. It didn't make sense that anyone were expecting them, unless there was an inside informant.

But that, too, seemed impossible. B. Garden traced all its communications. It would have a record of any and all communications wired to the IGCS system, and any inside leaks would quickly be discovered. Unless the systems themselves were corrupt, which was also impractical. IGCS was a self-contained system, with all software generated within and pertinent to the communications systems itself. It was an independently functioning medium between Garden transmitting systems. Unless Galbadia or Trabia had tricked the switch, or had inside informants…

There were too many possibilities. It would take forever to sort through them, and by that time, who knew what those responsible could accomplish.

Seifer sighed. He was too tired to be trying to sort through this coherently. The wind was getting even colder, and he found himself shivering a little. He backed up further into the train car, folding up his legs underneath his chin. The blood on the side of his head was completely dry, and his sweater stank of beer and the stale scent of bar. His belly was almost painfully full from Chu's place.

Just like old times. And yet, far from them.

He gazed over at Quistis, who was plastered against the side of the rickety boxcar, eyes shut and supposedly asleep. He couldn't be sure, though. As an upper-level SeeD, Quistis had completed all advanced training, which included staying awake for 72 hours at a time and retaining at least sixty percent of her functions as a capable soldier. Still, she looked exhausted. The bruises and cuts were nothing a few more potion infusements wouldn't clear up, but for now, she looked pretty banged up.

She'd be fine. Trepe was a survivor. Even when he'd hated her the most, he'd granted her that.

He'd granted her so little over the years…

He thought back to Quistis' reluctant admittance of her plans for the future. He'd been surprised that she'd even spoken them- two years past he was hard pressed to find a conversation with Ms. Trepe that hadn't involved the words 'detention' or 'Squall'. Quistis was not all the same girl she had been as a child- knowing her now was knowing a completely different person. It was…an _interesting_ process getting to know Quistis Trepe, to say the least. Not an easy one, but maybe one worth the effort. He hadn't decided yet.

Beneath all those layers, Quistis was weak. Weak, because she needed others. He had always known that. She had so many things she pretended to be- so many charades she supported from day to day. At her core, she was uncertain, lonely, and tired of being both. Years ago, he would have hated her for that- exploited her. But now, he found himself just as tired, and wondering if Quistis' pretended strength wasn't still strength in some strange way.

True, years ago, he would have scoffed at her dreams- a house on the ocean with a porch swing and a slobbering mongrel was simple-minded and at the bottom rung of the ambition ladder, not at all the ambition he would have chalked her up for. And yet, those things had a certain quiet appeal to them now, after everything he'd been through. He stared out of the moving train, and let himself try on the dreams of Quistis Trepe.

They fit surprisingly well.

A house, one with creaking floor boards to fix and a roof to re-shingle. A truck with all the payments made and a dog to hang its head out the window on the passenger side with the window rolled down. A back porch that caught the salt spray of the ocean and squeaked a little on well-used hinges.

He glanced at the woman across from him, who was now sound asleep, and wondered again at the absence of a knight in her white ocean castle. He tried on that mantle, for a moment, trying to fit himself into the mold as someone's husband and protector, but the thought was strange, stifling. It was as frightening as it was foreign.

He had never been the knight in shining armor that seemed to fit Squall so well. His suit had always been tarnished, awkward. His sword had never been raised for anything but his own vain glory.

He was an unfit knight. He always had been.

He sighed. What the hell. It was only dreaming. He'd think all this fairy tale shit tonight, and discard it in the morning. Hope held too long was like eating fire. It was a taste whose warmth didn't last, even if the burns did.

Just for tonight then. Then he'd let it go.

He stared back out at the landscape, sorting through the futures in his head, sorting them out like sample color tiles on a blank white wall.

A backyard, with a garden. A screen door that banged shut, but didn't slam. Maybe a couple trees, and a pantry with no damned TV dinners in it.

No corn fields for miles around.

And maybe even a pretty girl to dream with him by the ocean.

One that would stay.


	26. What Dreams May Come

AN: Serabin started out as an extremely minor character that was supposed to create comic relief, and wound up a big supporting character with a big role in F&I sequel. Serabin was probably the first character I created who grew all by himself…it was a strange experience. By the way, when you envision Serabin, try to think of a kinder, gentler version of Sephiroth. Thanks for reading!

Hearts are worn in these dark ages  
You're not alone in this story's pages  
Night has fallen amongst the living and the dying  
And I try to hold it in, yeah I try to hold it in

The world's on fire and  
It's more than I can handle  
I dive into the water  
I try to pull my ship  
I try to bring more  
More than I can handle  
Bring it to the table  
Bring what I am able

I watch the heavens and I find a calling  
Something I can do to change this moment  
Stay close to me while the sky is falling  
Don't wanna be left alone, don't wanna be alone

**-**Sarah McLaughlin, World on Fire

Disclaimer: I own Cerberus, Serabin, Brek and Gzarth….and this lovely three legged desk. If I owned Squaresoft, I think my furniture would be more complete.

Chapter 24

The silver top glinted dully in the morning rays that cut across Balamb's faded fields, the glass and steel taking on an almost golden luster in the first grey light of an early winter dawn. The building sat motionless on its grand base, intimidating in its silent stature. The water ran along the corridors, a light trickle that echoed throughout the Quad, and the wind echoed hollowly through the empty stairwells.

Balamb Garden slept…save for the five SeeDs convened in an empty cafeteria, all gathered around one of the circular tables. The cleaning committee had turned two of the lights on, but the rest of the place remained in silence and shadows, the faint scent of burnt hash browns and cleaning fluid lingering in the air.

Four SeeDs sported looks of absolute exhaustion- Irvine had his head propped up on his hand, Zell almost had his forehead in his toast, and Arya and Quistis both seemed mesmerized by the ceiling fan. Selphie, however, bounded from chair to chair, eagerly handing out stacks of papers in manila folders.

"Like, what the _hell_ happened to you?" asked Irvine, glancing at Quistis out of the corner of his eye, taking in her ragged appearance. The girl looked like she had been dragged headfirst through a patch of grass and briars. The entire right side of her cheek and shoulder was completely grass-stained, and the rest of her was black and blue.

A routine investigation? Hardly.

Quistis sighed, rubbing her temples. The four cups of sake were still swimming around in her head, something the train jumping certainly hadn't helped. She'd been shaken awake only to be dragged to the end of the boxcar, the dark grass and the distant moonlight swimming in front of her eyes. She'd landed unceremoniously on Balamb Garden's grassy lawn that proceeded to its base, nearly knocking her dinner out of her. She'd said quite a few choice words to Seifer, as she recalled, but he had been too busy laughing to say anything in return.

The entire independent mission had been an impromptu comedy of errors, and Quistis was finding herself to be not much of a comedian at its conclusion. She was in too much pain. She pressed her arms against the coolness of the table, trying desperately to ease the throbbing. "Explain later," she muttered. "Stop shouting."

Irvine nodded in response and slipped his head back into his folded arms, grumbling about sleeping.

"Who calls a top secret meeting before sunrise?" muttered Zell, his eyes bloodshot and hair unkempt, dressed in a thin white t-shirt and a pair of black Balamb monogrammed shorts. He'd just found a comfortable spot wedged between Cerberus and the wall before his phone had jolted him awake. The dog hadn't even cracked an eyelid. Lucky mutt.

"I'll give y'all a hint- it's the only one who's actually awake," mumbled Irvine from beneath his arms.

Quistis hadn't even bothered to change. Upon stumbling tiredly into her room back at Garden, she'd found a message requesting her presence back in the cafeteria at nearly the crack of dawn. She'd sighed, turned on her heel, and walked in a tired daze back down the halls. The others had given her worried looks, considering her appearance, but their questions had been interrupted by Selphie's happy chirping.

Quistis looked into her own folder, finding a list of clientele and various order lists beside it. Another stack of paper consisted of current weapon prototypes, with several highlighted models in a rainbow of colors. Selphie had clearly been busy. When Quistis had first met Selphie, it had been her conviction that the girl never slept. She still hadn't ruled it out.

Selphie scraped up a chair, flipped it, and eagerly slid it up to the table. "What you all have in front of you is the information Irvine, Arya and I were able to extract from BioTech and AmmuCorp. I've put copies on Squall's and Cid's desks. Also-"

Suddenly, Selphie's eyes focused on her. "What the heck happened to you, Quistis?"

Quistis sighed. "Nothing." The room was still spinning.

Selphie shrugged. "Anyways, I've highlighted several of AmmuCorp's biggest contributors, but BioTech isn't looking promising."

"How'd you get these?" asked Quistis, propping her head up on her fist.

"You don't want to know," replied all three in unison.

"Why doesn't BioTech look like the bad guy?" asked Zell, setting down his stack of papers. "If anyone's got the cash to be shoveling into researching more destructive weapons, it's BioTech, right?"

Selphie shrugged. "You're right. But if they're manufacturing it, they certainly aren't selling it to any large-scale operatives, otherwise it'd be listed there in product development for the factions to see and retrieve. These files weren't exactly on their web page, you know." Selphie sighed. "It's really impossible to tell for sure, but if BioTech is doing it, they're hiding it pretty well. Besides," added the brunette. "The model of this bullet used is too basic and well-known, and they're the only company that produces it on a large scale that we know about. If _they_ modified the bullet, it'd be too easy to trace back to the company and gain a warrant for search and seizure. They'd have a lot of legal matters on their hands if someone traced a bullet that wasn't in the registrar of the Weapons Monthly database."

"Damnit." Muttered Quistis.

Her friends glanced in her direction.

"…I was hoping that BioTech was behind it," admitted Quistis, setting down her folder and trying to rub the drink out of her temples, which seemed to have developed a fondness for swimming in her eardrums as of late.

"How come, Quis?" asked Zell, frowning as he looked up.

Yawning, Quistis tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and gave up on trying to keep the room steady. "Because if BioTech _isn't_ doing it, we're looking at a smaller scale operation with a lot of capital. They'd be buying the bullets wholesale from AmmuCorp, and modifying them themselves, which would indicate a barrage of chemicals and scientific knowledge at their disposal. They're going to be harder to trace, and if they're well funded, it's going to be difficult to know what to expect from them even if we _do_ manage to find them."

"Yeah, good point," muttered Irvine, yawning and running a hand through his unkempt hair. Quistis glanced over at him, thinking how different he looked without his hat.

Arya shook her head, resting her hand on her forehead as she gazed at her computer screen. "I still don't rule AmmuCorp out. They've got a lot to gain from private investors, and I'm sure they're always looking for grants to further BioTech's operations."

"Naw, I don't see it. BioTech's a big corporation." interjected Irvine. "Their interest would be sellin' lots of weapons to each side, not exclusively distributing what could be a top sellin' item to just one group. Their interests are better served in more sales, not less, right?" Irvine set down his papers. "It's a conflict of interest. Sellin' top grade weapons to another faction that's tryin' to frame Balamb'll only guarantee that in the end they'll lose Balamb's business when it goes outta military commission."

"Unless the compensation outweighed competition," replied Quistis. "But then, again, we're assuming that BioTech's the distributor."

Arya looked up. "You really don't think that BioTech's behind it?"

Quistis just shrugged. "It seems terribly advanced, even for a company as well funded as they are. Their last public development was a blast compressor, which first-level magic has been doing since the first human conversion _of_ magic. Mag-coupling is hard enough for a SeeD to do with a weapon, and that's on a temporary basis and with years of training."

"Yeah, but that's their public development." Pointed out Zell. "Who knows what's behind the press? 'Sides, who the hell else even has the manpower for that sorta thing? "

Arya paused. "How long can the longest coupling last for?"

Quistis shrugged. "Anywhere from five seconds to five minutes. But that's pushing the limits of even the most advanced caster." Quistis paused, knowing that Arya's experience with magic consisted of SeeD Basic Training and little else. Arya's strength and mission types were usually limited to those requiring heavy mechanical or technical manipulations, not those of combat. Quistis decided to explain further. "With mag-coupling, the inanimate object actually becomes animated for the moment, as much as cells with no memory can hold. It attains different physical properties through the user. Simply put, the magical memory inherent in the caster's cells, for the moment, becomes that of the weapon. It's more of an extension of energy than it is actually casting. With casting, you're simply using a small portion of your own energy to help conduct the energy of the spell through your body and into a different medium. With mag-coupling, you're actually using more energy to _extend_ that energy onto the weapon. It's tiring."

Zell was muttering about too many big words too early in the morning.

Selphie nodded. "It's hard enough for our top casters, even one like Quisty or Rinoa. It's sorta like throwing up energy. To couple it on a bullet for an indefinite amount of time, and render it active enough during that time to perform its desired function- in Seifer's case, to poison him really badly- it doesn't just take skill, it's like a whole new science."

 "Maybe they've got inside information." Shrugged Zell. "An old military guru handing out procedure or something."

"Some guru," muttered Irvine, "Like, he'd be light years ahead of _us_."

Selphie was tapping her pencil against her lips, staring at the list of distributors in front of her. Quistis also glanced down at her list as well.

_Distribution List for Current Fiscal Year_

_Galbadia Garden                                    6,464,721 GIL_

_Balamb Garden                                      3,487,901 GIL_

_City of Esthar                                          4,222,567 GIL_

_Xyionn__                                                     2,689,361 GIL_

_Trabia__ Garden                                        2,585,982 GIL_

RX4018547                                             1,555,872 GIL

Countless others followed, but the sums grew increasingly insignificant. Quistis frowned and adjusted her glasses.

Arya opened up her laptop, calling up the information with a few rhythmic snaps of her fingers against the keys. "As expected, Galbadia and Balamb Garden are among the largest customers on the list, but Xyionn is supposedly a non-military faction whose expenditures are above even Trabia Garden." She looked up. "This is rather disconcerting."

"Xyionn? What kind of organization is that?" asked Quistis, looking up from her own sheet. "I've never heard of them before."

"What kind of _name_ is that?" muttered Irvine. Selphie and Quistis looked over at him and smiled.

Arya's fingers never let up on the keyboard. "I couldn't find anything out about it, other than its address on the mailing list. It's in the outskirts of Dollet. It's strange that we haven't heard of it before. It must be new…or top secret."

"What kinds of weapons is this organization importing?" asked Irvine.

"It doesn't say." Replied Arya, shrugging. "It's just a distribution list, not a weapon inventory summary."

"So, we send out a small team to investigate what kinds of uses that Xyionn is putting to the inventory," said Selphie, setting down her folder. "In the meantime, though, how are we going to investigate BioTech any further?"

The group fell silent, lost in thought.

Quistis tapped her chin. "Arya, you tapped BioTech's main computer, right?"

The girl nodded, resting her chin in her hands as the computer light flickered off her glasses.

Quistis seemed deep in thought for a moment. She pressed her wrist harder against the coolness of the table. The burning in her casting wrist was killing her. "Is it possible to flag their fiscal inventory, so that any new orders and purchases will be recorded and sent here?"

Arya nodded. "I think so. I can put a bug in the main system that will rewrite itself automatically to any new data and send it as a copy. It'll get a lot of junk in there, but that's the best I can do. I can't flag a specific item, and if they're coding those bullets, it isn't going to help much." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Not yet, anyway. I'll see what I can do." Arya paused. "All military bases and operations are pretty much using the same ops systems now, since Darwin Drosskow's new system came out. I could potentially bug the ops systems themselves, and flag each operation's inventory. That's not going to work on an unofficial and illegal organization, though, unless they're foolish enough to record their inventory. And, it'll take a lot of time."

Quistis frowned again. "Who's Darwin Drosskow?"

Arya looked surprised at her question. "Only-"

"Only the most revolutionary _dork_ to grace the computer industry since what's-his-face." Drawled Zell sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "She could write a book on him."

Arya shot him a sharp look. "Darwin Drosskow is a _genius_!" she snapped, folding her arms across her chest. "AIROS revolutionized the simplicity of user-interface on-"

"Blah blah blah," replied Zell, waving his hand. "He's just another pretty-boy with a high-tech garage that wouldn't know the difference between a gun and a joystick. The less thinking with weapons systems, the more room for error, you ask me."

"What's his problem?" asked Irvine, nudging Selphie.

"Byte envy." Selphie muttered.

Arya opened her mouth to retort, but Quistis quickly intervened. "If all military bases are using the same ops systems, wouldn't that make them easier to infiltrate?"

Arya shook her head. "No. Each system designs their own security detail, as you would with any other operations system. The IGCS system's defense was particularly advanced."

"But you can crack this one?" asked Irvine.

A cleaning man tripped over the wires stemming from Arya's computer, which trailed across the entire cafeteria. He swore up a storm. The group ignored him.

Arya smiled. "Of course. All I have to do is wire each program to do a daily spec _through_ the ops system. The gate key is similar to every system. Consider it done."

"If it's that easy to flag, wouldn't it be that easy to break into and manipulate?" asked Quistis.

Arya shook her head. "No. Even I don't have a slaver capable of remotely operating a system like that."

Selphie was frowning. "Did the IGCS tower use the same sort of ops system as the one you're talking about, Arya?"

The dark-haired computer whiz nodded. "It was really big news a few years ago." She blushed at the raised eyebrows from the other five people at the table. "Well, I suppose it was only big news to computer geeks, but…the ops system was revolutionary- it depleted human maintenance costs and had several security layers as a precautionary backup. The system was supposedly flawless."

"But when the IGCS system failed-"

"The system should have repaired itself." Finished Arya. "If that failed, the system should then have reported its malfunction to the maintenance crew, and in the event of prolonged inactivity, restarted its emergency ops programs to send a notice to all its feed distribution clients that the system was down. The problem, as I told Cid, is most likely entirely human error." Arya reached back and switched off her monitor. "No worries, though. We're rerouting communications to the old tower in Timber on a temporary basis until the IGCS can be rebuilt." She glanced around. "You all seem a little behind on this new technology, so I'll make out a basic information sheet on the new operating systems."

Quistis made a mental note to find out what exactly AIROS stood for as she dog-eared the distribution page.

Selphie nodded and shuffled her papers. "That's all we can do, for now. Cid isn't here to authorize any missions, though, so any investigations that SeeD does will have to be authorized by Serabin, and can't involve massive artillery."

"I'll go to Dollet." Said Irvine, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest.

Zell glanced over at Irvine, then shrugged himself. "Fine by me. I'll go, too."

Quistis glanced over at him. "You'll only be able to bring your weapons, and a few basic spells. That's all Serabin is qualified to authorize till Cid and Squall get back. It'll be an extremely low profile operative-"

Zell grinned and gave her a thumbs up. "No worries, babe. Irvine'n I'll handle it, no prob."

"Ha! This from a guy who thinks explosions should be mandatory on every mission?" replied Irvine, swatting his friend on the back.

"What can I say? Never got enough fireworks as a kid."

Arya smiled as she shut her laptop. "Aside from flagging BioTech's main computers and dispatching a small squad to investigate Xyionn, what else can we do?"

"Nothing." Replied Quistis.

"What?" asked Irvine. "Are you _serious_?'

The young blonde glanced over at her friend. "What do you _suggest_ we do, Irvine?"

Irvine shrugged. "Seems like we're just playin' real good sittin' ducks, Quisty." Replied the cowboy. "There's gotta be more we can do."

"Any more will violate SeeD's legal parameters." Replied Quistis. "We're not under contract for any of this, and independent investigations are already heavily scrutinized by the board enough as it is."

"Screw contracts." Replied Irvine. "Xu, Squall, and Cid are all down there getting' eaten alive by some damned politicians, and we're sittin' here just waitin' on a verdict. Somebody cut all our communications for a reason, and I'll bet that reason's got to do with targeting one of the Gardens. Garden could be shut down by the time that we find anything!"

"That's no reason to be impulsive." said Quistis evenly. "If we're caught committing the slightest infraction, men like Sirri will have us drowning in stipulations in no time. If anything, this is a time for caution _before_ action. We can't afford to have our hands tied if something _does_ present itself. We all need to be careful. We're looking bad enough as it is."

Irvine sighed. "I guess you're right, Quisty. I just hate all these Hyne-damned politics, that's all."

Arya nodded. "We all do. But I'm sure that Squall and the others are doing their best."

Quistis was frowning. "When was the last time they sent a report about the conference?" The conference was supposed to be a three-day intensive affair, and communication was not expected, but she had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, one that sat a little too much like lead for her liking.

"The morning before the conference, when they arrived," replied Selphie. "Squall didn't sound very optimistic, and even Xu was worried. The majority of the collective was against Balamb, and although Laguna and the mayor of Balamb were obviously strong supporters, things didn't look good. They could suspend operations, at worst, until the source of error in the IGCS is determined."

"Everyone's been up in arms about any military expansion since the sorceress war. Since Sorceress Edea and Seifer tore up Galbadia Garden and used it like a toy gun, Gardens have been seen as increasingly unstable military operations." In fact, Quistis had heard quite a few politicians label the gardens as 'floating revolvers' that could be easily claimed by renegade operations for personal use. "Cid's refusal to cement alliances in favor of temporary contracts certainly hasn't helped him politically," she continued.

Neither had Cid's decision to harbor old war criminals like an ex-sorceress and her former knight, but that remained unspoken in the group. Although certainly not one of the family, the moment Seifer had passed through Garden's gates under Edea's suggestion, and into Quistis' reluctant tutelage, he had earned the group's reluctant protection. Though far from 'one of them', he carried in him the faint loyalties of childhood that had survived the torrents of their young lives. Seifer's connection, though far from concrete, was not as brittle as it once was.

"The best military organization is self-supporting." Replied Irvine defensively. "Temporary clients make better bedfellows than politicians, I say." If Irvine hated anything more than office buildings and arachnids, it was the slimy moneygrubbers that would stab a guy in the back for a handful of gil. At least real soldiers fought each other face to face.

"I agree with you completely, Irvine," replied Quistis, deciding not to bring up the fact that no military organization was truly self-supporting. "But our operations and our expansions are in the hands of politicians. Cid's lack of affiliation isn't going to pave the way for him, that's all I'm saying. We're going to help him, but we're going to have to be discreet in doing it."

Irvine nodded, looking resigned.

"How'd your mission go by the way, Quis?" asked Zell, gazing worriedly over at his battered friend. If Almasy had anything to do with Quistis' battered condition…

"I've had better," replied Quistis dryly.

"Find anything out?" asked Arya.

"Not really. The mother had nothing of importance to note other than that the windows had been broken and it wasn't anyone that the children would have recognized. From what I've researched from the local police files, there seems to be a definite rash of abductions, but it doesn't seem to correlate with anything." She yawned. "It's just another investigative avenue that, right now, we can't spare the time for." Really, Quistis was now wondering why she'd agreed to go on the outing with Seifer. There had been something about his eyes that day, haunted, vulnerable, that she had wanted to believe his suspicions, if only to ease that haunted look in his eyes. "At any rate, Seifer's satisfied his volunteer hours."

"By the way, how the hell _did_ you get so banged up?" asked Irvine, taking his friend's appearance in fully.

Quistis shrugged, running a hand through her hair. "Long story. Guarsen's place of work proved to be a…volatile atmosphere."

"What the hell was it, a bar?" scoffed Zell.

 "You might say that." Replied Quistis. "The atmosphere wasn't very conducive to repelling a mob, in any case."

"Well, you look like hell, darlin'." Said Irvine, gazing concernedly over at his friend once again.

"Yeah, Quisty. You look terrible," echoed Zell worriedly. "You should go see Dr. Kadowaki."

"Duly noted." Replied Quistis irritably, running a hand over her face. "Is this meeting over?"

The rest of the group shrugged. Muttering, the young woman turned on her heel and headed towards Dr. Kadowaki's office.

Selphie scurried around the table, gathering up the manila envelopes. "I'm gonna go an' see about helping Arya do those system flags. See you two later!" Planting a quick kiss on Irvine's cheek, she scampered down the hall.

Irvine glanced over at Zell as Arya waved and headed back to her room. "Come on, buddy. We got a mission to go to." Mentally, Irvine had already started checking things off in his head. Go clear the mission parameters with Serabin, stock up on potions-

"Yeah, just lemme drop Cerberus off in Quisty's room." Zell frowned after Quistis, remembering something Rinoa had said earlier. "Think she an' Seifer are really-"

Irvine shrugged. "Naw. Quisty's got more sense than that." The cowboy stretched, yawning as he picked his lanky form off of the chair and headed towards the storage facility. "'Sides," he replied, grinning, "She's too cranky to've gotten laid."

Zell frowned . "Hey, before we leave, I gotta go score some major brownie points with Arya. I'll catch up with ya in storage, buddy."

Zell yelled something about a ribbon after that, but Irvine lost it in the echo. "What'd you do now?" he shouted after his friend. Irvine shook his head. This little group of friends was getting stranger by the day.

…

…

…

"Quistis Trepe, what did I _tell_ you about casting?" The doctor clucked like an angry hen as she tapped at the veins in Quistis' right arm, waiting until a blue strand snapped up before impaling it with an iv needle. Quistis flinched, and looked away. Her arm cooled instantly, however, and the relief from the burning in her arm was worth the needle.  Dr. Kadowaki followed the same procedure with her left arm, and soon the burning had begun to fade altogether.

The doctor was glaring at her, still waiting for an answer.

"I know." Replied Quistis, sighing. "Stop shouting," she added under her breath.

"Well?" The portly older woman stood in front of Quistis' bed, hands on hips and reminding Quistis very much of the mother she'd never had.

"I…forgot." She grumbled, feeling very much like the petulant child of the mother she'd never had.

The doctor resumed her clucking. "You look terrible, my dear," she sighed. "Here, take these," she said, handing Quistis a small cup of brightly colored capsules.

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" grumbled Quistis irritably, flexing her hand as she downed the plastic cup's contents with the other.

"Because it's true." Dr. Kadowaki quickly swabbed some antiseptic over Quistis' cuts before pressing her hand to the young SeeD's forehead, Curaga flowing into the damaged tissue on her face. Because of the elapsed time, the bruise itself would remain until her body flushed the excess fluid out, but the swelling and associated tenderness had already gone.

"Any other injuries I should know about?" asked the doctor, setting down a small tray of metal instruments.

"My side hurts a little." Replied Quistis, reluctantly.

Clucking again, the doctor took in the bruises on her side and administered another Curaga spell, making Quistis' entire body spasm. Her arms were still aching with an intensity that made her temples throb. In all honesty, Quistis would rather have gone without the Curagas. The magic tended to mess with the body's adrenaline, kicking it up several notches and wearing her out twice as fast. She was nearly asleep on the table as it was.

"However did you get into this mess?" asked Kadowaki, giving her an I-told-you-so look.

"Carefully." Muttered Quistis, yawning.

The doctor ignored her charge's sarcasm. "I'd say just the opposite. I'm going to go get the forms for the accident report." The doctor turned to leave, but Quistis' next words stopped her.

"It wasn't a mission."

The doctor stopped in the doorway, raising an eyebrow. "Really? And what possessed you to take the risk of an unauthorized departure from Garden, after I specifically told you to take it easy?" The young woman didn't answer, and the doctor scowled, glaring at Quistis with her hands on her hips. "Who went on this Cactuar-chase with you, may I ask?"

Quistis shrugged again. "Seifer and I-"

"I figured as much. And is Mr. Almasy in the same condition you are?"

"I don't know." Replied Quistis, flexing her wrists, which were beginning to tingle.

The doctor sighed. "When you see him, please send him down immediately."

"What makes you think I'll see him?" asked Quistis, frowning.

"A hunch."

Quistis just rolled her eyes.

"Now," said the doctor, turning serious as she grasped Quistis' wrists and gazed at the damage once again. The bruises in her arms had worsened, until almost the entire patch of skin was purple and swollen. The lines of veins were no longer visible beneath the cloudy surface.

Dr. Kadowaki's gaze burned into hers. "Miss Trepe. You know very well that there is a threshold of damage in which, simply put, the body can no longer conduct a magical current. You are nearly at that threshold. If you keep this up, Quistis, you may lose your casting ability forever." _If not your life_. The words went unspoken but not unacknowledged by either woman.

The doctor's eyes were grave, and Quistis felt a sinking feeling in her stomach at the news. Casting was her strength…if she lost it, she'd be virtually useless as a SeeD. "This is serious business, Quistis. Take the leave I've scheduled for you, or may well cost more than your casting."

Quistis shrugged. "Garden-"

Dr. Kadowaki shook her head. "Quistis, this is serious. Your mag-poisoning is at a more advanced stage than you realize. I suggest you take what I'm telling you seriously, and take a less active role in Garden's defense for the time being."

The young woman just shrugged in response.

_Stubborn girl._

"In the meantime, Ms. Trepe, you've tacked another two weeks onto your waiting time. Now, I want you to sit there for the next hour, and don't move, or you'll jar the IV," said the doctor, tapping her IV bag before she left the room, still clucking to herself. "After this, I don't expect to see you back here for some time," said Dr. Kadowaki, raising her eyebrows sternly as she ducked out the door. "Unless it's to help me in the lab."

The bag contained a mixture of saline solution infused with a low amount of cast Cura. The procedure, although creating a nasty stick in her arm, was quite fascinating to Quistis. Lower magic created rather stable ionic bonds with chemicals, the energy of the less severe spells not prone to chemical mutations like Curaga. Dr. Kadowaki had been instrumental in implementing this new procedure, and many hospitals now used the techniques. The doctor had explained it once to Quistis, and she had studied the findings in recent medical journals wherein Draw points were utilized for medical purposes. Magic, although much had yet to be explained about it, was most definitely a form of energy, and as such, was highly malleable chemically. Chemical bonds were also forms of potential energy, and the endothermic reaction between low level spells and other chemical agents was stable enough to feed to the body, where, once there, the bonds were broken and both agents could be administered safely into the bloodstream. The chemical infusions seemed to have a faster effect on the body than magical ministrations alone. Quistis, being one of Garden's top magic users, had often helped Dr. Kadowaki infuse the saline bags on her inactive duty hours, during which time the doctor had explained the new technology. The research had fascinated Quistis, and as she considered the IV, her thoughts went back to the bullet she had extracted from Seifer. If the bullet were coupled with a chemical agent, would the poison hold longer in the metal?

Unlikely. The magically infused saline bags had to be kept at a certain temperature, otherwise the compound became unstable and the bags tended to explode. And the bullet used on Seifer most definitely contained the casting form of poison- nothing else would spread that fast. If one found a chemical that could remain stable when infused with the magic coupling….

It was a possibility. But who would have the bio-chemical knowledge to accomplish such a feat?

Quistis watched the IV drip, lost in thought.

…

…

…

Dr. Kadowaki leaned against the door of the supply room, staring up at the endless rows of bottles, gauze, suture kits and rubber tourniquets. She ran her fingertips along a row of anti-inflammatory medications, hoping to spot one with a low enough dosage for Quistis' everyday use. The girl was badly in need of one, and although the cream wouldn't undo the damage done, it would certainly ease the pain. She scanned the shelves again and again, knowing that she knew the storage room by heart and could maneuver about to retrieve an entire drug cocktail for just about any ailment in the dark. Her mind, however, was distracted from her work.

In the almost ten years that Quistis had been a student, she had never been so worried about her patient as the day she was admitted. Till now.

She had never seen such an advanced case of mag poisoning in her thirty years as a medical doctor. She had seen documentations of several fatal cases during her training as a military doctor- pictures of people dead from internal bleeding and intense trauma to the nervous system, disturbing but distant pictures that lined the glossy pages of her texts. The body simply could not handle the stress of the magic, and the veins ruptured, causing death within hours, if not immediately.

Quistis….

…she had never seen such an unhappy child stumble through Garden's gates nearly ten years ago.

Quistis was not a normal girl- the doctor had known that since the day of her admittance. No normal child walked through the gates of Garden with broken ribs and a haircut that looked to be the courtesy of a lawn mulcher. No normal child carried the sadness in her eyes that Quistis had, or possessed the determination of her years. The doctor had coaxed the girl out of her shell with books and an apprenticeship in her office fetching gauze and treating minor cuts and burns of older students, and watched as slowly, the girl seemed to return to life. Quistis' distraction lay in her intelligence. Kadowaki recognized the girl in herself, and quickly formed an attachment to her.

Quistis had always been careful- had always followed every procedure to a fault and minimized risks whenever possible. Her mission track record was nearly flawless. Now, however, Dr. Kadowaki was noticing a lapse in the young SeeD's concentration. A lapse in judgment, responsibility, but in Quistis' case, she was becoming careless with herself. And the doctor could guess the distraction in two words.

Seifer Almasy.

The doctor had treated Seifer since his admittance to B. Garden almost ten years ago. He was often marched to her office to be treated for fights- the boy was sullen and stubborn and seemed to have no use and no liking for anyone else around him. He barely listened and swung his innately charming smile and his temper around like a blunt instrument, charming at random and offending more precisely. The doctor had watched Seifer Almasy carefully, the way he lashed out at those around him with an almost buried anger, the way he shrunk back from mainstream student life, and the way he rejected every trace of authority that he possibly could in his short stay at Garden.

She recognized that anger now, too, dulled but not forgotten. An adult Seifer had learned to be charming, his wit and charisma was polished and poignant, but he was no less wounded. His once prized beauty and talent were now barely acknowledged facets of his personality- crippled by his own self-hatred. His anger was tucked behind his eyes, held steady in his fist and self-directed. But even pointed at himself, it was no less dangerous. She had hoped the young man would eventually collect his bearings, and her hope was renewed when Quistis agreed to take him on as a pupil once again. Seifer badly needed direction, and Quistis was the very embodiment of it.

Seifer was as careful with emotion was a Wendigo in a china shop. The boy had obviously never had a mother to beat some tact into him…although someone had most definitely beat something into that boy at a very young age. She had not missed the boy's scars during his initial physical evaluation, although the young man had little to say about them.

The doctor had not missed, however, the dynamic between the two young people over the years. The way that Quistis had stormed into her office, eyes flashing, hand buried in the collar of Seifer's jacket as the young man's nose gushed blood onto the floor, both of them swapping verbal abuses. The way the two slung words at each other in the hallways- Seifer purposely running into her, and Quistis following after him, flustered. And, she had not missed the way he watched her now, careful and a little caring, or the way she stared after him, longing and a little afraid.

Sadness and anger…could one heal the other? Dr. Kadowaki located the bottle of anti-flammatory cream and read the dosage before pocketing it and turning out the light.

She sincerely hoped so, for both their sakes.

…

…

…

Serabin folded his hands, learning over the desk to regard the two expectant SeeDs in front of him.

"No."

Irvine and Zell frowned in unison. "What-" began Irvine.

"Mr.Kinneas, you have been a certified SeeD barely one year's time, and you, Zell, are certainly not known for your neatness in following mission parameters. Why by the grace of Hyne would I send you two on a renegade mission with absolutely no precautionary stipulations of conduct?" The temporary leader sat down the mission proposal, flicking a strand of long, white hair behind him and regarding them with an even green gaze.

Zell made a face. Just because he tended to overdo the 'pyrotechnics' of certain missions…

Irvine scowled at him. "What's that got to do with it? We're just goin' to check out a group of people and see the use that they're putting to weapon orders we got from AmmuCorp-"

"-Whose bugs were placed without my permission, I might add," replied Serabin, looking up from the stack of papers in front of him. "You have crossed nearly every line SeeD has ever constructed within the past two weeks in some of the most illegal procedures I've ever seen accomplished, and when Cid gets back from the conference, he's going to have to bury the mission reports.." _Including that damned dog,_ he added to himself. "Besides, you can't use those weapon orders in any kind of public facet. They were obtained illegally."

Zell considered. If Serabin refused to let them go…He had used Serabin's not-so-well known interest in Quistis to get himself out of the dog-fiasco. Serabin wasn't going to kill the mutt if it belonged to Quistis. This, however, was a different matter entirely. This was procedure and he'd never known Serabin to abandon it.

Irvine rolled his eyes. "Judging by the rate we're getting' eaten alive at that conference, I don't think Cid'll mind a little pro-bono investigation. It certainly can't hurt anything."

"That remains to be seen," replied Serabin. He looked at the two men in front of him and sighed after reading their expressions. "I can tell that you're simply going to go anyway. I've dispatched two SeeD teams to Trabia and Galbadia already to find out more about the recent IGCS failure on each end. Take what you need," he said, shuffling his papers. "Oh, and you're taking Gzarth with you."

The two young men groaned in unison. "Aw, man, not Gzarth!" protested Irvine. "The hell would you send Gzarth with us for?"

"Why doncha just send us with the friggin' plague!" muttered Zell, running a hand through his hair.

Serabin regarded the soldiers sternly. "Gzarth is hardly the plague. Gzarth has been a SeeD for nearly three years. I do believe, however, that he could benefit from some…procedural enhancements."

"What, you mean like _learning_ procedure in the first place?" grumbled Zell.

Serabin rewarded him with a scathing glance. "You're so fond of going off on these renegade missions, at least break in a rookie and I'll pretend never to have had this conversation. Just because you happen to be the legendary 'heroes' from the secondary sorceress war does not grant you the right to design and direct missions whenever you deem necessary, especially not when it puts Garden's welfare at stake. Missions are _given_ to you, not the other way around." Serabin narrowed his eyes, reminding the two young men in front of him like a scolding parent. "You'll remember your ranks, gentlemen, or I'll have you scrubbing the sub-levels with toilet brushes. And I'd better not get any reports from Dollet complaining of any ill-timed explosions, Dinct."

"Yes, sir," replied the two, saluting.

Zell rolled his eyes as the two friends walked out the door. "Great. Just great. This mission is already shit and it hasn't even started. Friggin' pompous, long-haired wind-"

The door opened. "Dincht!"

Zell froze in his tracks. _Shit_.

"I trust you've taken care of that…._creature_ that caused such dissent in the hallways yesterday?"

Zell turned. "Uh, yeah. Nobody'll mistake him for a monster now." _Unless T-Rexaurs start wearing party get-up_, he thought to himself. "Anyway, he's Quistis' problem now, not mine."

Although _Quistis_ didn't know that yet…

"Regarding Ms. Trepe," said Serabin, 'Tell her I wish to speak with her at her earliest convenience."

"Yeah, sure, will do," said Zell, closing the door behind him. Man, that guy needed to loosen up even more than Squall.

…

…

…

"Damned needles." Quistis walked down the corridor, still rubbing her arms as she muttered to herself. The IV drop had cooled the burning for awhile, but now it was back, full force and nearly maddening in its insistency.

She brushed her free hair out of her face, heading straight towards her dormitory and looking forward to a hot shower and a quick nap. There was certainly no time for a long one. She would then go straight to mailing services to see if her package had arrived yet from the D.S. Research Center. The place had only been operating for a year, but since Garden and numerous other military establishments had given generously to fund its renovation, she assumed the place was as operational as it had been in recent years. The nature of its research was now more of a military nature, given its donators, which was exactly why she'd deemed it the perfect place to send the bullet for a complete cocktail of field-related tests.

She was planning out the rest of her day into a mental agenda when a sharp pain in her shoulder sent her crashing into the side of the wall. She winced immediately, gripping at her arms as pain traveled upwards clear to her spine.

"You really should watch where you're going."

She whirled, glaring back at the source of the voice to find the figure of Brek Garek lounged against the side of the wall just inches from her. His dark hair was slicked back, a few shiny strands ducking into his even darker eyes. His gloating smirk was enough to get her blood boiling, but his audacity _really_ made her want to shed a couple of his teeth with her fist. The marks on his throat from Seifer's lashing were barely evident above his collar, but she noticed them all the same.

Brek's eyes roamed over her. "I hear they're having a fine time at the conference, your friends and Mr. Kramer."

"And what would you know about it?" snapped Quistis, straightening up and pulling together the tangle of emotions pumping in her blood long enough to give him a proper glare. _Careful, Garek.__ I outrank you in miles._

Brek's smile increased. "My father just _happens_ to be the head of the Galbadian city council and a prominent senator, if you've forgotten."

"Oh, had you mentioned your father was a senator?" Quistis sneered. "Forgive me. I thought his formal title was "Chief Operator of Illegal Arms Deals and Professional Embezzlement.'"

Brek's gaze darkened. "Be careful, Trepe."

"Or what? You'll hit me over the head with your pocket book?" she spat. "I haven't forgotten your military infractions, and only a fool would be afraid of your money."

"Why are you protecting Almasy all of a sudden, Trepe?" asked Brek, advancing closer. "If I recall, you were in as much of a hurry as the rest of them to collect his head two years ago. I wonder what's changed since then? Cid sends his most obedient bitch to clean up the political backlash over his wife's sanctuary, and suddenly you two are the best of friends?" Brek chuckled, the sound like that of a pack of hyena's echoing off the walls as he examined his gloved hand. "Well? Is fucking Almasy's brains out winning you any new Instructor's licenses? I doubt it."

He smirked at her darkening expression and looked positively amused at her glare as he glanced over her ragged clothing, eyes flickering on certain aspects of her anatomy. "Your clothing suits you. I always thought you were overdressed for a military whore."

 "And I always thought that you were remarkably well groomed for an inbred rat, Garek," she spat at him, rubbing her wrist.

 "It has always bothered me the great fate bestowed upon you bastard orphans. You in particular, Miss Trepe. After all, as a woman what use have you for being pretty or accomplished?' A twisted smile affixed the young man's face. "Perhaps for my own appreciation as you lick my boots. You see, I'm going places, Miss Trepe. If you like, I'm sure I could find a position under me that would suit you."

"In your dreams," spat the woman in front of him.

His smile grew even more condescending. "Quistis, let me impart some knowledge to you about the ironic workings of the world."

She glared at him without reservation, loathing laid open in her gaze as he walked in circles around her.

"There once was an age when great blood meant great power. The superior lines of ancient aristocrats bred great leaders and even greater armies. Sadly, today no such stipulations for good blood in power exist. Now, weak men like Cid Kramer are rulers of military institutions. Orphans like Squall Leonhart command powerful armies. Trained whores like you," snarled Brek, his breath close to her ear, "Become SeeDs." He saw her body tense up with rage, a sensation that only heightened his pleasure. She would not giving him the satisfaction of moving away, but she was repulsed by his proximity. He loved to see women like Quistis Trepe squirm.

If not _beneath_ him, then _because_ of him.

"Men like Seifer Almasy come from a long line of barely coherent gutter trash. Their blood is as thick as turpentine. Greatness has not been programmed into his body, and it certainly doesn't pump through his blood. A sorceress dragging him by his dick through the muck of a messy political war does not make him any worthier of greatness than a dog. The day, Miss Trepe, when orphaned trash may become SeeD, is the day that SeeD becomes no more than a military trough to whore out blind servicemen and women for contracted alliances. These times may have changed, Ms. Trepe, but Seifer Almasy will not become a SeeD. I'll see to it, one way or the other. Trailer trash does not beget heroes."

"You're the only filth I see in these halls," snapped Quistis. "And money can't hide your smell forever."

Brek's jaw tightened. "I watched as Galbadia fell to the filthy hands of Almasy and his mistress. I remember Trabia's downfall. Have you forgotten it so easily?" Brek's gaze darkened. "Almasy is a monster. He always has been, and always will be." The young man tilted his head to the side, studying her. "Have you forgotten how he hated you before? What reason has any of that to have changed?"

Quistis didn't respond, only folded her arms and regarded him with the same half-loathing, half-leery expression.

Brek stood back from her, studying her like a wary rodent. "It doesn't have to be like this, Quistis."

"Like what?" she snapped.

"You and I don't have to be at such odds." He said, smoothly, his grooming clearly coming back to him as he advanced on her another step. "If you were more agreeable-"

She took a step back. "What exactly are you asking me?"

"To back off." Said Brek, his gaze even. "To let Mr. Almasy's fate come to claim him."

Quistis' gaze remained steady, although, internally, she was at a loss to what Brek was hinting at. "Harm Mr. Almasy, and no amount of check writing you do will make your cries heard from the D-District prisons."

"Idle threats make poor bedfellows, Miss Trepe."

"I don't make idle threats." Quistis narrowed her eyes, matching his gaze. "As such, I might suggest that you sleep with one eye open."

Within an unexpected instant, Brek had knocked into her, the flat of his arm pressed against her throat and his weight crushing hers against the polished wall. She glared at him, stare volatile beneath his pin. "You've made a very bad decision." drawled Brek, a darkness seeping into his gaze that rivaled Seifer's.

She jerked her head away from his, refusing to give him the satisfaction of yelling out of disgust.

"Just remember, Trepe, when you bed with mongrels, you wake up with fleas."

"Exactly," returned Quistis, shaking a loose strand of hair behind her shoulder and casting him a glance cool enough to freeze liquid magma, "Why I never slept with you."

His body was still pinning hers into the wall, and she could feel with disgust his growing erection pressed up against her leg. She should have reported him years ago. The sensation sickened her, and she nearly gagged as he pressed closer to her. "You're going to regret this."

Both became aware of the approaching footsteps down the corridor, and reluctantly, Brek released her, straightening his SeeD jacket and dusting it off as it he had come into contact with something unruly.

"We'll see," replied Quistis, stalking down the hall.

Brek Garek's eyes followed her, a mixture of lust and anger ripe in his eyes at the way the girl dared to bear her back to him. "Stupid girl," he murmured, shaking his head.

She'd see the error of her ways, soon enough.

….

….

_The rats were awake again. _

_Their nails scratched on the linoleum floor, eyes flashing in the sliver of moonlight that peeked through the crack in the door. They stood up on their hind feet, sniffing the air around them for available food. They'd already spilled  an old can of oatmeal, hissing as they fought over the remaining flakes._

_The rats were always awake._

_One was gnawing on his shoelace. He kicked at it, but the thing soon forgot its fear and returned, sniffing at him again like it sniffed at the TV dinners. Suspicious and hopeful._

_He pressed his palm to the door, listening to the drone of the television and the sound of beer bottles being smashed against the wall. The pantry was small, and cramped. It stunk of rat urine and rotting potatoes and fear. He hated the scent of fear, ripe like sweat and rotting flesh. Fear was an acid that chewed at the skin, bubbling in the chest. Soon he would be no more than a skeleton._

_…The Skeleton Boy…_

_He could hear him calling even now, the faint whisper in his chest, the burning that burned only slightly hotter than the fear. _

_The **hate**._

_"Where you at, _**boy**_?!"__ Another beer bottle smashed against the door, followed by an enraged shout. The splinter of glass scattered the rats, which wove around his ankles like a wave of murky water. He shrank away from the door, covering his ears with his hands. He whispered her name in the dark, the name forbidden and almost lost to him, holding to the memory of her smile as if it was all that existed._

_And then **she** was there, there in the darkness. He could feel her behind him, her breath hot against his neck. "Hello, Seifer."_

_"Shhh."__ He whispered, pointing to the door. "He'll find me in here."_

_"The rats are always awake, aren't they?" she whispered, stroking his cheek. Strange, her touch. So beautiful and revolting all at once. Mother and monster…_

_He stared at the sliver of light that lingered beneath the door. "Yes." He whispered._

_"He's always awake too, isn't he?"_

**_He._****_ The Skeleton Boy._**

_"Yes."_

_A shadow passed beneath the door. "He's waiting, isn't he?"_

_He shuddered under her touch. "Yes."_

_"What is he waiting for?"_

_"For…someday."__ For someday, when he would fly like the crows flew, up into the sky forever._

_He could feel her smile in the dark. "I will bring you someday, little one."_

_He blinked, and the rats disappeared. The closet became the cornfields, their rows lit with sunlight and the sky blue and cloudless above him. He stared up, nearly blinded by the sunlight against his eyes as he watched the crows flew up towards the sunlight._

_"You see? See how they fly?"_

_He nodded. _

_"You can fly, too, you know." Her hands were on his shoulders. "I can give you wings."_

_He shook his head…and yet he couldn't tear his eyes away from the crows. They flew away, why shouldn't he? His heart ached for it, strained against his chest…_

_"I'll make you fly."  Her promise sounded sweet, but he knew it could burn as badly as the fear and the hatred. Worse._

_She wouldn't make him fly. Her lies would burn his wings away and there would be nothing at all. And he would fall. Fall hard, and no one would catch him. She would be gone, a shadow, a waif that he had once dreamed in vivid crimson color. She would not catch him._

_He knew this now. He had not always known it._

_She smiled. "You aren't ready yet. But you will be."_

_He just shook his head. _

_He could feel her impatience, thick against his skin like a new kind of acid. "No? Perhaps you've forgotten how crushing this earth can be, **boy**."_

A row of clouds rolled in, knitting together to sew the sky dark once again. The crows screamed, their black feathers falling as they dropped from the sky. And they were falling, falling, and they weren't crows, but rats, rats with their crimson eyes and their curved claws and teeth raining down on him, screaming--

SeeD dormitory. Clean sheets. Eight in the morning.

21 years old two days ago. He had forgotten his birthday. Not like it mattered.

"Damnit," he muttered, rubbing his face with his hands.

Another fucking dream.

He glanced over at the clock, and stifled another groan. Eight a.m. He'd barely been asleep two hours.

"Damnit…" He muttered again, squeezing his arm. It hurt like hell, as if the pain were branching off in his veins and shooting through the rest of his body. He grimaced, shutting his eyes.

_Someday_…

He snapped his eyes open, glaring around the room as he dropped his arm. The pain was gone, as if it had never existed at all.

"The fuck?" he muttered aloud.

The silent room held no response. Hyne, he was turning into a fucking loony.

Leaning over, he grabbed the edge of the cardboard box, sliding it across the room-close enough to rummage through. Instead of closing around the old bootlaces he expected, however, his hand closed around a smooth, round object, one that felt strangely like stone. He pulled it up, squinting at it in the semi-darkness of his room. It _was_ a black stone, flat and smooth, with the image of a white bird scrawled on it with white crayon.

_Quisty_.

He frowned. The hell would a rock remind him of Quistis for?

His memory stirred. Because she had made it for him, the winter before she left.

He ran his thumb over the waxy sheen of crayon, remembering the way she'd wrapped it in newspaper and taped a yellow flower to the front. She was the only one who made gifts, aside from Ellone, and even Ellone hadn't bothered after awhile. Quisty, though, persisted, pushing the wrapped gift at him till he opened it. He'd said it was stupid, and she'd cried, which made him feel bad…later. Still, it _was_ stupid. Who painted a bird on some damned rock and called it a present? And yet, after all these years, he still had the damned thing. He couldn't explain why. It was like a lot of things about Quistis that lived in his head.

He remembered the day she'd left, all too clearly for his liking.

_Walking through the tall grasses that graced the dunes preceding the ocean, dragging a stick in the sand behind him and occasionally swinging it like a sword. Ahead of him ran Quistis, her long hair swinging in her awkward gait, the result of too much skinny little leg and not enough balance. She smelled like sun lotion and daisy chains. She was laughing, although at what he couldn't guess. Girls were always giggling. He figured it was a side effect of the cooties they carried. But he followed behind her, eventually catching up to her on the soft slope of sand that overlooked the water._

_She turned to him, out of breath. "I'm leaving tomorrow," she said, smiling, the happiness nearly overflowing in her eyes. "My new family is coming to get me."_

_Her words sunk in slowly, like stones on mud puddles._

_Leaving._

_New family.__ Leaving you. Like Mommy left you._

_Everyone leaves you._

_"You're leavin?" He didn't believe it. Quisty was always there. Bossing him, annoying the hell out of him, correcting his grammar and trying to get him to play that stupid house game…_

_She nodded._

_His expression darkened. Fine. He didn't need her, anyway. He didn't need any of them. "Good."_

_Hurt flashed across her blue eyes. "You don't mean that." _

_He scowled. What did she expect? Him to start bawling like a little girl? Beg her not to go? Ha. _

_"You don't know what I mean."_

_She was frowning at him, trying to grab hold of his arm. "You kin come visit, an' Squall kin come visit, an-" With a jerk, he shoved her off, and she tumbled back into the sand, hard enough to knock the breath out of her._

_"Squall ain't gonna come visit. He doesn't like you." He turned away. "Your family ain't gonna like you either. Nobody'll miss you and you'll be lonely, real lonely, and no one'll care."_

_Tears were on her cheeks. "That's not true! You're a liar!"_

_He turned around, and threw his stick into the woods as hard as he could. The wood shattered against a rock. _

_"Don't!" she yelled. Hyne, he hated her. She was always whining, always crying…always telling him not to do things…_

_He glared at her, and she took a step back. He fished in his pocket, and took the stone she had given him, and threw it with all his might, watching as it tumbled into the brush. "Don't, Seifer!" she really was crying now, and he hated her for it. _

_"I hate you! I don't care if you leave!" He turned and ran, leaving her, still sobbing, behind._

_In the morning, he heard the door open, and looked to see Quisty in the doorway, wearing her jacket and carrying a small suitcase. She looked like she had been crying._

_"I have to go, Seifer. I wanted to say goodbye to everyone. They said I could."_

_He rolled over. "Just go on an' leave. I don't care." He said muttered darkly._

_She reached over, and quietly, set something on the desk. "I don't believe you," she said, quietly, voice wavering on tears and that unique Quistis-like courage that never ceased, or ceased to amaze him. "I don't believe you, Seifer."_

_She'd left the rock behind._

_And with that, she was gone, out of his life like so many other stray leaves in the wind, tangled up in time and space until his admittance to Garden nearly seven years later. It was a different Quistis that had confronted him then, eyes cold and calculating…eyes that did not recognize him at all._

_And he still wanted them to hurt. Squall and the others. To hurt like he hurt…_

_But something told him that Quistis already had…_

He set the rock on the table beside his bed, then went back to staring absently at his ceiling. He wondered if Quistis was even talking to him now, since when dismounting the train she'd gotten quite a sideful of grass. He'd laughed his head off as she spit out the mouthful of turf she'd acquired, stumbling and spitting swearwords at him that he hadn't thought he'd known. He also found himself admiring the grass stains on her stomach and bared arm as she rolled to her feet, glaring at him to end all glares even as she begrudgingly accepted his hand to help her up. They'd snuck in under the gatekeeper's nose and walked towards the dorm wing, with her swearing at him under her breath all the while.

It would have been a lot funnier if Quistis hadn't looked like death warmed over.

He started to wonder how she was feeling, then thought better of it. She was a tough girl. She could handle herself.

He groaned as he rolled over on his side.

He'd go see her after he'd had a couple shots of whatever the hell Dr. Kadowaki was brewing for aching joints. He ran a hand through his hair only to find that the blood had dried into a throbbing knot of swollen flesh, and the rest of him felt like he'd gone through a meat grinder.

Déjà Vu really wasn't far off from one, apparently.

Knowing he wasn't going to get to sleep again, he rolled off the mattress and into a freezing shower. He didn't bother with shaving and pulled on a pair of pants, shrugging into one of the white button down shirts that were handed out for formal student functions to wear underneath the dress jackets. It was the only piece of clothing he had that wasn't currently bloodstained or generally soiled. He only bothered with a few of the buttons before shrugging into his jacket and ran a hand through his hair, which needed cutting again.

He leered at his reflection in the mirror. Twenty one? More like a hundred and fucking fifty.

He walked down the corridor, which was now crowded with students on their way to class. He weaved through the chattering masses, who generally ignored him as much as he ignored them, walking out to the Quad before parking himself on one of the stone benches. He stared out at nothing for awhile and rolled his shoulder, trying once again to get his head under control, taking gulps of fresh air to clear his mind. Students milled around him, a few glancing his way, but he was generally ignored. After all, he wasn't hacking off any heads or spouting off ridiculous soliloquies about conquering the world. Apparently, even old villains were forgotten, or at least, became less interesting. It suited him just fine. Better to be forgotten. Better to forget.

"MORNING."

He nearly jumped off the bench.

He turned to see Fujin sprawled out on the steps, legs stretched out in front of her and her arms resting, curved, against the stone staircase. Fujin smiled and inclined her head in greeting, taking a large bite out of the apple in her hand.

"Christ, Fuj! Don't scare me like that!"

"JUMPY." His friend smiled as she took another bite of her apple. "LONG NIGHT?"

"Yeah, you might say that," he replied. "How've you been these last couple of days? I haven't seen much of you and Rajin. I've been-"

"BUSY." Replied Fujin, the small smile never wavering from her face. Wisps of her pale hair cut in front of her good eye, obscuring the glint of amber and tigerstone. She was dressed in her SeeD uniform, the jacket unzipped to reveal a plain white tank top, legs extended out like a lean cat sunning itself. She reminded him of that sometimes, a lioness, for all her pride and temperament. She had always been like a big sister to him, always mothering Rajin and him. Mostly Rajin. She had always seemed to hold some reservations with him, some sort of high regard that he couldn't place and certainly couldn't understand. She had never tried to boss him the way she tried to boss Rajin. He wondered what she thought of him now.

Hell, he often wondered what to think of _himself_.

"So how's Rajin?"

"RAJIN." She answered, shrugging, as if it were answer enough. And it was.

Seifer chuckled. "I see. You guys haven't changed at all, have you?"

"NO," Said Fujin, tossing the apple across the courtyard. A surprised shout sounded from behind a cluster of hedges, and Fujin smiled.

"Can't say I'm surprised you two ended up together." Replied Seifer. It was true. He'd never seen two people so completely different- Fujin was silent as stone, and Rajin didn't shut up. Rajin was impetuous, Fujin was grounded. Fujin kept Rajin centered, and Rajin made her laugh. They just _fit_. He turned fully around on the bench. "I'm happy for you, Fuj." It was an unfamiliar phrase for him, but he found that he meant it.

Fujin smiled, but it seemed distant. She nodded. "SOMEDAY," she said, inclining her head at him.

He shrugged.

_I don't think people like me are meant to have somedays.._

The young woman got up, dusting off her pants. She shook her head, a sad look in her eye even as her lips twisted in a determined half-smile. "SOMEDAY." She repeated, insistently, a playful edge to her tone as she wagged her finger at him. As lighthearted as Fujin could get, anyway.

Seifer just shook his head again, smiling. Even after all this time, how she could believe in him was beyond his comprehension. It was more than he deserved.

A lot of things about this place were more than he deserved.

Fujin just smiled, the curve of her lips distant and a little sad. "SEE YOU." She replied, gazing after her friend with an unreadable expression in her eyes.

"Yeah, _someday_," he replied, teasing her a little.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY." She called over her shoulder, tossing something at him and smiling her tigress smile again as she disappeared into the crowds.

He caught it reflexively, then uncoiled his palm. There, wadded up in his hand, was a silver necklace exactly like the one he had lost. It was a soldier's chain, an id tag, but a flowing script was etched into the worn metal.

"Transit umbra, lux permanent."

Shadow passes, light remains.

_If only. Thanks, Fuj._

With a little difficulty, he hooked the silver chain around his neck. It settled there easily, a familiar weight, and the ghost of a grin touched his lips. He looked for Fujin in the crowd to thank her, but she was already gone. He turned back around, arms spread along the edge of the bench as he stared into nothing.

_What is he waiting for, Seifer?_

**Someday**_…_

…

…

…

Zell and Irvine each balanced a duffle bag over their shoulders, glaring around impatiently as they lounged near the boating docks, waiting for Gzarth to arrive. They'd bummed a ride there from one of the commuter students returning home, and were still waiting for the third member of their party. The boys had stopped at Ma Dinct's house for a couple of egg salad sandwiches and two extra helpings of potato salad, which left both boys with a sense of fullness and mothering.

"We should just leave without him," muttered Zell, looking sullen.

"And, like, risk gettin' Serabin on our asses?" returned Irvine. "I think not, buddy."

"Man, I'd rather have Serabin riding my ass than have that walking time bomb along with us." Said Zell dropping his bag and folding his arms, his feet tapping against the pavement in an impatient rhythm. Irvine often wondered if Selphie and Zell weren't mismatched siblings that shared the same phenomenal energy supply.

"He can't be that bad." replied Irvine.

"Ha! You remember the mission where Arya got dumped in that room full of rats?"

Irvine smirked. "Yeah, I remember." How could he forget? Zell had been in the doghouse for a week, and the normally mild-mannered Arya had thrown quite a few library books at her beloved boyfriend's thick skull when they'd returned.

"Yeah. Who do you think got the maps backwards in the first place?"

At this, Irvine chuckled. "Got a grudge, huh?"

Zell looked disgusted. "Tch. By what freak of luck this guy managed to pass his SeeD exam, I'll never know."

Irvine squinted into the distance. "Hey, speakin' of the devil…"

A tall, lanky figure was jogging down the cobblestone walk, waving his fool head off. The boy was the same age as they were, a little shorter than Irvine with a mop of red hair, green eyes, and what could only be described as a boyishly appealing face. Zell personally thought he looked perpetually confused.

"Hey guys!" he shouted, waving again before he lost his footing, tumbling for a few feet before righting himself back into a run, his bags dragging on the ground behind him.

"Freakin' Hyne,' muttered Zell, drawing a hand over his face. "I told you."

Gzarth finally reached them, flushed and out of breath, his gasps crystallizing in the air. "Man," he panted, "Can't believe I'm finally goin' on a mission with you guys! The big heroes!"

"Yeah, we're as surprised as you are," muttered Zell.

Irvine elbowed him. "Serabin discuss the mission parameters with you?" he asked.

"Yeah. Got a change of clothes an' my rifle. Serabin said to pack light."

"Oh great. He brought a weapon." Muttered Zell. Irvine elbowed him again, but Gzarth seemed oblivious. He was looking excitedly up at the boat. The vessel was made for speed rather than capacity, and would carry the SeeD's across the ocean to Dollet in about four hours time. Irvine sincerely hoped that Zell didn't get sick on this trip. His old boots would never be the same after the last trip to Deling.

The whistle sounded, startling Gzarth, who stumbled back and dropped his bag. Zell rolled his eyes.

"Well, gentlemen, let's be on our way," said Irvine, glancing up at the darkening sky.

Irvine adjusted the lapels of his coat, turning just before he boarded the boat. It was getting cold outside, and the draft seemed to bring a renewed sense of the premonition that he'd felt on the last train. Something was out of place, missing from the normally calm bubble that surrounded his thoughts.

Irvine spared one last look at the sky as the boat's engines started to fire up, shuddering a little beneath his dragonskin duster.

A storm was coming.

…

…

…

Quistis swore as she slid her key through the entrance slot, wanting nothing more than a hot shower and a decent infraction report to slap Brek Garek with. The spoilt brat had always been a sliver in her side, but now the young man seemed hell bent on becoming a thorn. She had little tolerance for insolent little boys, and that seemed to apply double for insolent little boys with false bravado and dirty money.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the door opened and she was knocked flat on her back, her skull colliding with the floor as a giant pink tongue swept across her cheek. Large brown eyes gazed into hers before her cheek received another lashing.

She released the grip on Save the Queen. It was only the dog.

"Dow-ppppfffhhh!" Quistis' scolding was interrupted by the third sweep of that same large tongue, a muscle that was easily the size of her own hand. Zell must have snuck the dog back into her room this morning, although how he got in was beyond her. She made a mental note to thank Zell for the surprise and find out exactly how he got into her room in the first place.

"Off!" she shouted, laughing in spite of herself as she got to her feet and walked inside, but not before the large mongrel got in a few more friendly licks.

She noticed, then, as the door began to shut again without her that there was a small note posted on her door. She plucked it, hurriedly scanning the writing as she stuck her foot into the slide and slipped in.

_Quistis-_

_You totally owe me for this one. By the way, the dog's new name is Cerberus. Has a better ring than Alm-**ASS**-y, doesn't it? He's gotta wear a ribbon or a collar or something so students can tell him apart from the stuff in the Training Center._

_                       Love ya babe,_

_                                                Zell_

_p.s. Oh yeah, and Serabin wants to see you._

Quistis shook her head, grinning to herself as she walked in and tossed the note on her bed, where she found yet another note and a large brown box. She picked up the note, shaking her head. Was her room a free-access quarters, now? The note turned out to be from Rinoa.

_Quisty__-_

_Zell told me about your new dog! How exciting! Now maybe Angelo will have somebody to play with. Anyway, I sent along a couple of Angelo's things that I thought might come in handy until we dock near a store. We've both been so busy lately-we should have lunch, soon!  I could use some help with my GF theory, and I want to hear about how your new project is going! See you later!_

_Love, _

_Rinoa_

Lifting an eyebrow, Quistis rummaged through the box. Rinoa had included a food and water dish, some old chew toys, and an old collar. Quistis tried the collar on the dog, but it was at least two sizes too small. Quistis made a mental note to place an order at the mailing services. The dog, it seemed, for better or for worse, would be here for awhile. She would have to thank Rinoa later.

The dog, apparently now called Cerberus, wagged its tail, grinning like a maniac as he hopped up onto her bed and settled his massive head on his paws, looking up at her expectantly. "Cerberus." She said out loud. The dog raised a massive ear in response, then proceeded to ignore her. She shrugged. Cerberus had a certain ring to it, and if she squinted, the dog did look a bit like his namesake, minus two heads and without the pink ribbon. She made a mental note to find a good home for the dog as soon as possible, but in the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to have some company in her room.

Or in her life, for that matter.

Quistis wiped at her face, detecting an odor on the dog's breath that smelt faintly like ketchup. She made another mental note to ask Zell exactly what he had fed the dog…and just what the hell the dog was doing with a pink ribbon of all things around its neck.  It looked like the dog had swallowed a Moomba Scout troop, for Hyne's sake. She suppressed a chuckle at the thought.

She walked into the shower, shedding clothing as she went and feeling like with each layer a coating of skin was coming off. She shut the door, feeling like the dog was watching her, and then immediately felt silly. It was a dog, for the love of Hyne. Just because she hadn't undressed in front of an audience in, well, forever….

Quistis closed her eyes as she leaned against the door of the shower, pressing her face against the wet plastic of the door. She had scrubbed until her arms burned too much to continue, then simply slumped against the wall and let the water pour down her face.

Thoughts flowed through her mind like the water on her scalp, and she let her mind drift to the night before. Interviewing Sheri Guarsen, visiting Chu, tumbling off a train with Seifer behind her, holding hands-

Quistis opened one eye under water, and was immediately rewarded with a clump of soap in her eye. Swearing, she stuck her head back out of the water and tried to wipe the last thought from her mind. What was she thinking? Seifer Almasy? The most cocky, annoying, snobbish, irritating, self-deprecating, charming-

_Charming_?

Quistis ran her fingers through her hair. The sooner Seifer took the SeeD exam and was released from her realm of responsibility, the better. This constant proximity wasn't healthy, and it certainly wasn't making her think clearly. She wasn't used to constant male company, and the time she'd spent with Seifer clearly was warping her mind. The idea of Seifer as anything more than a student was strange…disconcerting.

No, there was no possible way she harbored feelings for Seifer…the momentary flashes of…_whatever_ were only moments of insanity bent on destroying her ordinary, orderly, perfectly organized,

….lonely,

….little

…life.

Quistis twisted her head to the side, scrubbing hard at her skin and letting the water pour down her face.

Feeling refreshed and only slightly less exhausted she turned off the water and sat down on her bed next to a sleeping Cerberus, resting her head in her hands and fighting the urge to just lie down and sleep herself. Her body felt weighted, tired, and the pull on the mattress was strong on the woman in her. But the soldier's instincts in her were stronger. The soldier got up, and fussed with the clips and chains and buckles of the SeeD uniform, and walked down the long corridor to Serabin's office.

Serabin's emerald gaze flickered up to her, and he immediately set down his work and got to his feet. He nodded to her. "Come in, Quistis."

She complied, taking a seat in front of Serabin's desk. His office was on the same floor as the other classrooms, and although Serabin was Head Instructor, he was more management than anything else. Serabin was four years ahead of her in age, and but as a SeeD, she outranked him. He was first in his class, a top SeeD, and a top Instructor as well. They had taken a few of the Advanced Spellcasting courses together, and although she wouldn't go so far as to call them friends, she respected him. He had personally apologized to her when she'd lost her license, and had been one of the few people who had defended her at the council meeting that had cost her the job. Or so she'd heard later.

"I understand you've come into possession of a rather large breed of dog, Ms. Trepe," said the head instructor, the ghost of a smile tracing the corner of his lips. "He has caused quite the…commotion around here, in your absence."

A flush crept up her face. "I...apologize for Cerberus. I hope he hasn't done any irreparable damage. There was apparently a mix-up with the chain-of-evidence voucher I tried to put on him-"

"Oh, is that the creature's name?" The young man looked amused. "It's…fitting."

She folded her hands. "Frankly, Serabin, I didn't expect to be the recipient of the dog. His owner was involved in the IGCS investigation, and when his owner was killed, I felt responsible…I'll make some phone calls, and have-"

Serabin put up a hand. "Quistis, I'm sure you will figure out an appropriate way to handle this sudden…addition…to Garden's population." He smiled again, and Quistis noticed how white his teeth were. Serabin's smiles were rare, and their brief occurrences illustrated a very handsome man. Not a green-eyed devil, but-

She almost slapped herself.

"In any case, Ms. Trepe, I called you here to speak to you about a note Cid left me for you. Cid stated that you were to analyze your progress with Mr. Almasy, and thereafter, decide his ability to perform the SeeD exam this final time. Seifer's admission has been on hold for as long as humanly possible, and though Galbadia Garden is certainly in no hurry to acquire him, the rules have been pushed as far as they can be. Cid stated that you were the most qualified to make the decision, and said to tell you that he felt confident in your evaluation." Serabin sat back in the chair, hands folded, a lock of pale hair falling across his eyes. "Personally, I don't believe that Mr. Almasy will ever pass the SeeD exam, but he was lucky indeed to be the recipient of your tutelage."

"Ah…thank you." Quistis had never been good at receiving compliments. She always expected them to be directed at someone behind her, and constantly had to resist the desire to glance over her shoulder.

"Please notify me of your decision, Quistis." Said Serabin. "I'll have one of the instructors take him out to meet the prerequisites if you feel he's qualified."

At this, Quistis glanced up. "He's already made the prerequisites in all previous trials. Wouldn't it seem a bit…_superfluous_ at this point to make him go through them again?"  

Serabin raised an eyebrow. "All SeeD candidates must be given equal challenges. There must be no exceptions made, even for Mr. Almasy. _Especially_ for Mr. Almasy, Quistis. If anything, his trials should be upgraded."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "If administration continues with this double standard, what reason is there for Seifer to advance at all? If his reputation consistently precedes him-"

"As it shall. And as it _should_, Quistis." Said Serabin, firmly, frowning a little. "There was not a head hunt after the war in his honor because Mr. Almasy had some unpaid parking tickets. For political reasons, the council has agreed to forgive. But the council will not forget." He met her eyes. "As well it _shouldn't_."

"Then redemption is just a word." Said Quistis, her eyes narrowing. "It's a lie that we never should have told him. It's a lie we never should have told Edea."

"Edea does not seek a position in a military culture." Serabin's eyes met hers, a deep jade that went deep. "You and I are reasonable people, Quistis. We live in the real world, don't we? We both know Seifer's slate shall not be wiped clean at the end of all his trials. He will never have a fresh start. He will be a ward of this Garden for the duration of his career and he will be a liability on every mission. Deep down, I believe that Seifer knows it, too. Whatever else I think of him, Seifer is also a reasonable person. He knows as well as you or I that there is no fresh start. People do not forget. People do not ever forget. Garden is no different." Serabin's eyes flickered as he stood, resting his hands on the desk. "The best thing that could have been done for him was to refuse him in the first place." Serabin's voice, unlike others, was not filled with hate or scorn of the ex-knight. If it had, she would have raged against him, championed Seifer's cause as if he were a fallen soldier, just as she had as his student. But Serabin's voice was kind, almost gentle. It instilled no rage in her, only desperation.

Fear that he was right, and the knowledge that he was.

Quistis shook her head. "He will be a good SeeD. I believed it then. I believe it now. I believe he will be a better SeeD than most, owing to his experiences-"

Serabin just shook his head. "Your belief did not save him then. It will not save him now."

She held her jaw, proudly, as proudly as if she were six and defending Seifer Almasy from Edea for something he probably had done or would do. "You're right. He'll save himself. May I be excused, Serabin?"

"Of course, Miss Trepe."

Giving him a short and respectful bow, she shut the door behind her.

Serabin just shook his head. Such confidence. Absently, he wondered what it would be like to be championed by such a woman. He wondered if Seifer was aware of the honor.

Probably not.

He smiled after her.

_Foolish, beautiful girl._

…

…

…

She waited in front of the window, the lines of desks and monitors nearly blinding in the early afternoon light. It was where she lost him years ago, and where, now, she would let him go again, release him to his fate after mending his wings as best she could.

It was unfair of Cid to give her this mission. They all knew he would never fly again.

Somehow, somewhere, in the middle of this mission to teach him and to improve her own status enough to regain her license, everything had changed. It had become not about her, but about him. It had become about his progress, about his success, not hers. She had begun to look forward to their time together, the time in which he did not fight her and she forgot to fight him. She had looked forward to his flight. She had forgotten it was impossible.

He was dangerous, and last night he had been even more so, lying open like a fresh steel blade off the grinder, so ready to cut her down. And she had lay beneath that blade, opening up her dreams and hopes and, for what? In the morning, she was still Quistis Trepe and he was still Seifer Almasy. Just as it would be every morning that followed, forever.

Although, she was fast losing perspective on what that meant…or didn't mean.

It was time to let him go. His success or his failure, it had to be out of her hands now. The weight was too heavy, and if she were honest with herself, she would admit that it had become too precious.

She closed her eyes tightly, just hard enough to dispel her current line of thought. When she opened her eyes, she saw an empty line of desks, awash with sunlight. The brightness stung her eyes.

_It's time to wake up_, _Quistis,_ she told herself. _It is time to stop dreaming and to go back to the life you had before._

She called him on the com system, and stared out into nothing, shutting down the burning in her chest like a light switch, gazing at the shadows on the floor.

…

…

…

Seifer found her sitting on top of one of the large desks, feet swinging out beneath her as she looked out the window. He'd gotten her summons on his answering machine, although the thing had needed several kicks to spit out the message. Curious that she'd taken the time to seek him out before he could seek her out, he'd walked up to the second story classroom.

The desk was grand, polished- it seemed to eclipse her in its quiet grandeur. She'd changed into her old uniform- the SeeD uniform with all its buttons and gold trim. Save the Queen was spiraled onto her belt, the silver tip lying against the desk. She was leaning back, gazing outside the window, hands folded her lap as she swung her legs a little. It was the classroom that she had taught him in. She'd stood so tall at the front of the classroom, the graceful poise of her spine flawless and her face composed in confidence, a mask for all her uncertainty.

She was always a little tentative. He had recognized it in her as a child, and he felt it now, too- the hesitation in her eyes behind all her cleverness and assurance. He walked over to her, lifting her hair back from her cheek to gaze at the somewhat subdued bruises that lingered there. She flinched.

"You look better." He said, quietly.

She looked him over, her eyes traveling the length of him and assessing his injuries. The flicker of her eyes stirred some heat in him, and he made no move to hide it.

"You should go and see the doctor." She said, briskly. The warmth that had lingered in her gaze the night previous had vanished, leaving the look of blue steel he was used to seeing. She reminded him of the Trepe he had known two years ago, the stone statue with a permanent icicle up her ass.

"You didn't call me up here just to tell me to see the doctor, did you?"

She met his gaze. "No."

He stopped just short of her, leaning back on the center desk in the front row. He folded his arms. "Then what?"

She folded her hands, looking uncomfortable at his proximity. "Your SeeD assessment will be a week from today." She said, gazing back out the window. "I called you up to see if there were any questions or lessons you needed on procedure."

He shrugged. Like _procedure_ was going to help him. Following procedure had never been the problem. It had always been the fucking morons behind it that he hated following.

Quistis shoved herself off of the desk, walking with her hands folded behind her back. "I see. Well then, as of now, your evaluation is officially finished. Feel free to check out any one of the several Field Exam documentations to refresh the procedures, but in the meantime, if you're ready to complete your preliminary exam, I'll be most happy to notify Instructor Green or Instructor Glyphias, and-"

Evaluation. It sounded like such a dirty word.

He remained silent.

She looked exasperated. "Seifer, your physical and psychological evaluation is completed. You qualify. All that remains for you is to take the exam. You hardly need-"

But his mind had snagged on something. His eyes narrowed, as if he were suddenly coming to a conclusion. "My _psychological_ evaluation?"

"An evaluation was required by the board, as it was for Edea, for your admittance back here-" Quistis said, carefully.

Seifer was staring at her. "All this time **you've** been mind-fucking me, to see if I was nuts, or what?"

She flinched. But isn't this what she wanted? His distance? "You knew what this was. I was supposed to evaluate you. But Seifer, it hasn't been-"

_Psychological.__ His pride was still stinging._

_You _**knew**_ she was evaluating you…instructing you. Yeah, but I didn't know she was _**psychologically **_screwing me._

"I can't think of anyone less qualified to mind-fuck me. You're a real mind fuck yourself, you know that?"

She looked…wounded. _Good_.

"I wonder now, what'd they have to dangle in front of you for you to baby-sit me? A promotion? Squall's dick, what?"

But she was angry too, now. She stood up from her lazy crouch against the desk, hands fisted. "You should be happy that this is over and done with! Now you're finally rid of me, and soon you'll be able to wear a SeeD uniform and screw your way around Garden, just like all your _romantic dreams_-"

He was livid. "Don't _patronize_ me! All this time…all this fucking time-" He cut the sentence short, the intended meaning hanging between them in the air.

He noticed her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed at the corners, her gaze down. Which meant she was either really angry or really upset. He couldn't tell. He didn't care.

"I just wanted to help you-" she shouted back at him.

"You wanted to help _yourself_!" he shouted, slamming his fist into the side of one of the desks. "You wanted to help yourself, and Cid wanted to help himself, and I was just a fucking technicality!" He chuckled, cruelly. "You know, it's hilarious, you evaluating my head. You barely know what's going on in yours!"

"Seifer, I wanted to help-"

"I don't need your help! I don't want anything from you!" he growled, advancing on her as she backed away. Her back was at the desk by the time he reached her, but she stood her ground, steady, although the look in her eyes was tumultuous. "I'd forgotten how this place works. How _you_ work."

She was shaking her head, looking at him with a look that was very unlike anything that had to do with Quistis Trepe at all. It was open, vulnerable, hoping, the same eyes that she had stared at him with years ago with that same glance and that same hope and he hated her, hated her more than he hated his father. At least his father hadn't looked at him with that damned hope in his eyes, asking him to be something he couldn't.

"Stop looking at me like that! Stop it!" he said, slamming his hand down onto the hard table top hard enough to make a flurry of papers and cups jump to the floor. She jumped, both of them gasping for breath.

"When did you become such a bitter person?" she asked aloud.

"When did you become such a slut for ambition?" he snarled.

Furious, she raised her hand to slap him, but he caught her easily, wrenching her hand around behind her back and pulling her up against him. She struggled, briefly, glaring up into his eyes. "You're making it into this, because that's what you find easier to believe. You believe that someone would never want to help you because they wanted to. Seifer, this is your chance-"

"My chance to what?" he shouted, ripping his hand free of hers. Away from that damned warmth, that fucking possibility. "_My_ chance? No, Trepe. This was _your_ chance!" He snapped.

He backed away from her, the rage in him boiling up to scorn. "You and I both know it's never going to happen. Did either of us really think that SeeD was going to welcome me in with open arms?"

She was shouting now, too. "Then why'd you come back?"

"Because I didn't have anywhere else to go. Do you understand what that's like, Trepe? To run out of places?"

She saw the pain in his eyes, and she felt it, some distant answer that bubbled up in her brain.

_Yes. I do, Seifer. I know exactly what that's like._

The understanding in her eyes nearly undid him.

He released her, backing up and pacing across the room. "This place hasn't changed at all. And neither have you. And neither have I."

She touched his shoulder, and he spun, body colliding with hers and knocking them both back into the desk. The warmth of her skin reached up to press against his shirt.

Among other things.

They stared at one another, her gaze laid bare in a way that pulled at both his groin and his chest and shit she was _beautiful_-

_-and terrifying, and repulsive-_

Their gazes met for a moment, and he wanted to break her, to spread her out across the desk and to pour every anger and resentment he had ever had into her. She blinked up at him, unmoving. He wanted to kiss her.

_He wanted to ruin her._

"Don't touch me." He snarled, wanting her and hating her more than he had ever hated her in his life. He stalked out the door, wishing to high hell he meant what he said. Wishing every cell in his body weren't burning in him to turn around.

…

…

…

Irvine nudged his buddy as the shores near Dollet approached crimson in the early hour of twilight. "Hey, sunshine," he said good-naturedly, patting Gzarth on the back. "We're almost there."

Gzarth was leaning over the side of the ship, his black jacket tucked around him as he squeezed his eyes shut, willing the damned boat to stop spinning in circles.

"We can eat at that little seafood place before we go into town." Said Zell, enjoying Gzarth's predicament. "You know, the one with the hot rolls and the all you can eat crab-" Irvine elbowed him.

"I've had enough of the ocean, thanks," muttered Gzarth, turning a new shade of green.

"I should say so, buddy," agreed Irvine. "I think you tossed your stomach overboard about an hour ago." The tall young man adjusted his hat. "No worries, fellas, we're almost there."

Zell just grinned. "Can't wait to get a good night's sleep for a change. That damned dog took up three quarters of the bed, and the thing snores."

"Now you know how Arya feels," said Irvine, grinning.

"Hey, I don't snore!" insisted Zell petulantly, folding his arms.

"Say what you will," muttered Irvine. "I brought ear plugs this time."

Gzarth leaned up for a moment, having just wretched another dry heave at the water. Even Zell was starting to feel sorry for the guy. "So, tomorrow, we check out Xyionn, right?"

Irvine nodded. "We're going to find out what we can from the townsfolk first, then scope the area. It's just an information run. Serabin made it pretty clear he doesn't want any action taken yet."

Gzarth nodded, then promptly leaned over the boat again, praying to Hyne to make the boat stop.

Irvine just shook his head, walking towards the front of the ship with Zell in tow. "I'm just anxious to get this mission over with. Don't feel right leavin' Garden right now."

Zell shrugged. "I just want to get the hell off this boat. It's making me nuts."

Irvine grinned. "I think you n' Gzarth can agree on somethin', then." Irvine looked over his shoulder. "I think I saw a boot come outta that kid halfway outta of the harbor."

…

…

…

Selphie glanced over at Arya, the computer screen light flickering off tired eyes. "Find anything yet, Ary?" The two had snuck out past curfew, and with the help of Arya's key, had taken up residence in the library. They had drunk two liters of orange soda and eaten a box of wheat crackers 'borrowed' from the cafeteria between them, but so far, found no renegade terrorists with online postings, or any evidence as to who would be capable of long-term mag coupling.

The young woman shook her head, never taking her eyes from the screen as she adjusted her glasses. "Nope. RX4018547 is pretty elusive, I'm afraid. Either that or I'm just looking in the wrong places."

Selphie stopped her reading for a minute. "What kind of organization do you think they are?"

Arya shrugged. "An organization with revenue to blow, apparently. They've spent one million on tech supplies from AmmuCorp so far this year, and I've never even _heard_ of them."

"Maybe they're the terrorist faction we've been looking for." Said Selphie.

"I doubt it," replied Arya, taking a sip of soda. "Terrorist factions get supplies from other independent factions most of the time. Hot weapons, hot electronics, stolen merchandise, stuff like that. They usually try to stay as far off the mainstream as possible."

Selphie wiped some cracker dust off of the keyboard as she attempted to search through another book for information about mag coupling developments. "Maybe it's a _stupid_ terrorist faction."

Arya looked grim. "If only that were true. However, if they cracked Darwin Drosskow's system and the IGCS security interface, and managed to get enough explosives to level the entire building…then they've got better hackers and better military than Balamb Garden."

"Naw!" insisted Selphie. "No hacker's better than you, Ary!"

"Oh, I don't know about that," replied the other SeeD modestly, but she was smiling.

Selphie turned a page in her book. Great Hyne, the scientist in this book sure was happy to talk about all the varieties of poison, but when it came to incorporating them with _artillery_, the guy was no help at all. What boring stuff. "Maybe they've got a public and a private operative running," she thought out loud. "Y'know, kinda like most politicians."

Arya started laughing suddenly.

"What's so funny?" asked Selphie, looking up from her lap.

"I don't think we have anything to fear from RX4018547. Not unless they're going to clean us to death. C'mere, Selphie."

The brunette got up leaned over her shoulder, and a smile lit up her face. "We've been looking all night for maid service?"

**KLEENKORP**

_MAIDS MADE IN HEAVEN!_

The girls broke into laughter.

Arya shook her head. "No wonder I wouldn't find them! I was doing all these intensive search programs, when all I had to do was run a general search! They were item one on the search results, for heaven's sake!" Arya grinned, clicking on a picture of a SensBot decorated in an apron and wielding duster, its eyes red pins of light that looked out of place on a 'household appliance'. "They order the SensBots wholesale, then modify them for their own personal use. None of the weapons systems are equipped on the bots, so they must get them at a bargain price. RX4018547 must be just their ordering label." Arya shook her head. "Hyne, don't I feel silly."

Selphie laughed. "Well, hopefully the boys are having better luck with Xyionn."

"I hope not." Said Arya quietly. "I hope it turns out to be nothing."

Selphie shook her head. "Not me. Zell and Irvy can take care of themselves. We'll find whoever is behind this soon, I'm sure of it. And when we do- booyaka! Balamb's name'll be cleared, the bad guys'll be locked up, and all of this will settle down again."

Arya was quiet as she shut off the monitor, then turned to her friend. "Don't you worry?"

Selphie's expression turned serious for a moment. "Lately? All the time."

…

…

…

Quistis sat in the small, secluded portion of the classroom that ran off of Dr. Kadowaki's infirmary wing, trying to eat a ham sandwich and trying not to think about anything relating to Seifer Almasy. She was having better success with the sandwich.

It was a small cube of a room, with a single line of cabinets with budsen burners and a few chemical wash sinks. It was the area in which she helped Dr. Kadowaki infuse the 'mag-bags', as Dr. Kadowaki called them, and the area in which she'd studied in her earlier years to get some peace and quiet. Now, hours after curfew, she sat with a sack of provisions stolen from the cafeteria (a little move she'd picked up from Zell), and the envelope from the D.S. Research center. Cerberus sat at her feet, snoring, having eaten five ham sandwiches of his own. She tapped on the front cover of the manila envelope, debating whether or not to open it. She had a silly sense of trepidation that she could not explain.

_Stop being ridiculous_, she told herself.

With the edge of her thumbnail, she quickly sliced open the belly of the envelope and spilled its contents onto the desk. A stack of papers secured with a paperclip and a small plastic bag with the bullet inside fluttered onto the desk, casing Cerberus to lift an ear.

_Ms. Trepe,_

_We here at the __D.S.__Research__Center__ wish to inform you that the findings here forth enclosed are, at best, inconclusive. DNA types C and D were not identifiable, and the poisons contained on the bullet were not entirely of a physical nature, meaning that there _**has**_ been some mag-infusion . We would also like to inquire as to whether the subject from whom this physical specimen was acquired is still living. If so, we would inquire as to the nature of his sustained injuries, and, if possible, acquire more of the victim's biomass near the affected area. I have left my number on the attached sheet- please do not hesitate to call at any hour. We will look forward to hearing from you._

_Sincerely,_

_Jamis__ Wellshire, MD_

_Lead Scientist of Product Development, __D.S.__Research__Center_

_ENCLOSURES_

_Bullet Type AO14 slug findings:_

_85 Steel, pure substance_

_5 Aluminum, pure substance_

_10 Biomass, defined below_

_10 Biomass findings_

_DNA type A: Human, male, normal_

_DNA type B: Human, female, normal_

_DNA type C: unidentifiable, abnormal, unstable_

_DNA type D: unidentifiable, abnormal, unstable_

_Poison, type:_

_Atropa__ Belladonna, extract_

_Amanita Verna, extract._

_Calcium oxalate_

_Hyoscyamine__, _

_Benadomine__, _

_Scopolamine_

_Poison type A: inconclusive _

_Poison type B: inconclusive _

_Please note that the toxicity of unidentified types Poison A & B were thrice that of those identified. We urge you to again to call us here at the DS Research Center the moment you acquire this information._

She picked up the phone in Dr. Kadowaki's laboratory, dialing the number and waiting for a response on the other end while impatiently tapping her foot against the chair leg. It was late, but she was sure someone was up at that time of the night. There was always someone awake there- it was the nature of the scientist. Unending curiosity and caffeine.

Cerberus raised himself onto the counter, sniffed the bullet and growled.

"Get down, Cerberus," she muttered.

"You have reached the D.S. Research Center. We are unable to field your call at this time-"

"Get _down_." She insisted to the large animal, moving to push the giant dog off of the counter.

Quistis was about to replace the receiver when a voice scrambled on. "Hello?"

Quistis adjusted the phone. "Hello. To whom am I speaking?"

"Uh, this is Darvis? If this is about the pizzas, we didn't order any pizzas, and we aren't paying for them."

"Darvis, is Dr. Wellshire there?"

"Uh…yes, yes he is."

"May I speak with him?"

"Uh, who's calling, please?"

"This is Quistis Trepe." At the pause, she continued. "The SeeD who sent in the bullet for bioanalysis."

"Oh, he's been waiting to speak with you. I'll get him right away." There was a cluttering on the other end, followed by a curse. Quistis smiled against the receiver. Darvis had apparently dropped the phone.

An older voice was on immediately. "Do you have the specimen?"

"Excuse me?" Quistis frowned. "Who is this?"

"Oh, excuse me. This is Dr. Willshire. The individual from which that bullet was harvested. Do you have any salvageable biomass from the corpse?"

"The individual is _living_, Mr. Willshire."

A pause. "Are you sure?"

Quistis made a face. "Pretty sure, yes." _He just shouted at me two hours ago._

"Interesting. May I ask if said individual has been displaying any symptoms?" Quistis was amazed at the man's nervousness. Suspicion pooled in her belly. Could the findings have been that bad?

"No, a bit of tenderness around the wound and slight swelling, but that was to be expected." Really, Quistis had not checked Almasy for injuries since their return from the IGCS incident, and neither had Kadowaki. He really was an ornery patient.

"Amazing."

"Why amazing?"

"Because this person should be dead."

Quistis blinked.

The man appeared to be jittery with nerves. "The poison could not be duplicated, but that which was applied to living specimens in the lab seemed to cause a paralysis that was not a paralysis."

"I don't follow you," said Quistis into the receiver, making circles with her pen on the pad of Garden paper in front of her.

"Mmmm…that is to say, when we injected the poison into the animals, they became essentially immobile, paralyzed. They still, however, responded to the most basic of stimulus, when, ah, we applied that stimulus directly into their most basic sensory organs."

"That sounds like paralysis to me, Dr. Willshire. Quite a normal response to the types of poisons listed, am I right?"

"No."

Her patience was wearing thin. "Why not?"

"Ah…you see, Ms. Trepe, these specimens were already dead. The toxin shut down their hearts almost instantly. They were responsive to stimulus, however, for hours after death."

Quistis stopped scribbling. "A poison counter that stimulates dead tissue even as it creates it? How is that humanly possible?"

"Well…it isn't."

Quistis was losing her patience. "Then, Dr.Willshire, in what realm of _possibility_ is this possible?"

"The individual this bullet took. Male?"

"Yes."

"In reasonable shape?"

"Yes."

"Weight?"

"Around two hundred, I believe."

A pause into the phone. "There is no realm of possibility, Miss Trepe. This baffles me."

"There has to be something," insisted Quistis. "Were there any natural inhibitors present in the bullet, that would slow the poison's action time?"

"None. We isolated a few small samples and tested it further, and ah, well, it seems to trigger the release of a large amount of serotonin in the brain, among other things. The victim is rendered immobile and sensationally overloaded, the rest of the…business takes place. We don't even have terms for it. This is bio-weaponry on a level we've never seen equaled. We'd like to know where that bullet came from, Ms. Trepe." 

"So would I, Mr. Willshire." replied Quistis, baffled.

There was a pause on the phone, and Quistis glanced down at the reports. "The DNA sample reports….what exactly do you mean by 'unstable?'"

"Ah. The DNA was of particular interest. You see, the poison's enzymatic composition _changed_ when we ran samples on it. The proteins also. We ran seven small scale tests. The DNA was different each time. It was as if the poison was shifting, living…_adapting_ in its isolation…it would appear that its genetic structure is replicating, and changing in each subsequent replication."

Quistis frowned. "But that's impossible. Mutations only occur that rapidly in things with hyper-Malthusian life cycles, like bacteria, or-"

"Yes, we know. We're currently running tests on that machinery. But we doubt the error is mechanical."

Quistis just stared down at her papers again. None of this made sense.

"With your permission, we're going to continue to run tests on the isolated poison sample," said Mr. Willshire.

"SeeD's budget has reached its fiscal limits, I fear, doctor. I can't order any more tests run without proper authority, and that authority isn't currently present."

"Your team did us a world of good years ago. Allowed us to set up shop again, in a matter of speaking. Consider this as much an excursion of our own curiosity as it is a thank you."

"We appreciate it, Dr. Willshire. If possible, I'd like a cross analysis with the toxins that Dr. Kadowaki sent in some time ago. They should be listed under-" Quistis flipped a sheet. "JD-137, 0168415C. I know that your initial results turned back with a diagnosis of disassociative, hemorrhagic mag-poisoning, but I want you to run it again and compare any toxins that may be present in the tissue."

"JD-137…0168415C. Yes, we sill have a sample here."

"Good. Please contact us as soon as you know anything further. Information that would be especially helpful to us is who exactly would have the capacity to make a weapon like this."

"We'll call you as soon as we know anything further. Stay in touch." With that, Dr. Willshire's end was disconnected.

Quistis set down the phone, lost in thought.

…

…

…

Seifer lay on the cot, one arm behind his head and another that held up a tiny object between his fingers. He gazed up at the ring, squinting at it as the light flickered from one edge of the band to the other. It was simple enough, with small, curved etchings made in glinting gold presses all around the band. It was the one object that had survived the pickpockets that had rifled through his drunken form in the alleyways, probably because it was sewn into the inner pocket of his jacket. The ring had fascinated him as a child, and he had lain with his mother in the big bed, gently twisting the band on her finger as she stroked his hair. In the last days, she'd eased the circlet off and pressed the circlet into his palm. Her voice was dull, and raspy, but she smiled at him as she spoke. She always smiled at him, even when her pain was the worst and it made her throw up.

_"Hey, little man." She said, her special name for him. Not **boy**. Little man- it made him feel important. "This is a special gift for you, but you can't play with it like your other toys, all right? You have to keep this in a special place, so you don't lose it. You have to keep it for me."_

_"Why don't you keep it, momma?"_

_She smiled, the once beautiful lines of her face stretched taut, a strained beauty that he loved anyway. "Because it's for you. So you can remember me. Someday-" She lifted her hand to her mouth, and her chest wracked, violent coughs erupting behind her lips and her curled palm. Seifer ducked his head onto her shoulder, his little fingers holding her tight as he squeezed her eyes shut. He hated her coughs. He always squeezed her extra tight as if he could keep them inside her, could keep the sickness inside her forever and she would be all right. She'd gotten the cough only recently, the bedridden nature of her sickness leaving her open for all kinds of other disease. _

_Like a flower, lain out for other things to trample on._

_She said she had cancer inside of her bones. Seifer had checked every one of her fingers and toes, her legs and arms, and proclaimed the doctor wrong. She had laughed. Seifer would learn, later, when he was older, the terrible pain of her sickness, but he never saw it in her eyes. She'd always kept it from him, always smiled and laughed and read him stories and she'd been dying…dying slowly in a trailer bed with only her son for company.. _

_He couldn't save her, no one could have…but since the day she'd closed her eyes beside him, he'd never stopped wishing. Or blaming himself._

_The coughing subsided. "Because," she began again, her voice a little weaker this time, "Someday you'll meet a pretty girl, and she'll make you want to spend a long, long time with her."_

_Seifer sincerely doubted it, since it was a well-documented fact that other little girls had cooties and were generally pains in the ass, but he didn't say anything. The idea of it seemed to make his mother happy._

_His mother was still smiling. "So, when that happens, you give her this-" she closed her hands around his smaller ones, and gave them a little squeeze, which, in all likelihood, was the extent of her strength. "You give her this, and you think about me and remember how proud I am of you." _

_He looked up at her. "But I wanna spend a long time with _**you**_, Momma."_

_She smiled, water brimming in her eyes, and she gave his hands another squeeze. "I know you do, sweetie. Me too. But sometimes we can't stay as long as we'd like to. We have to go when it's our time. You understand?"_

_He didn't, but he nodded anyway. _

_She smiled. "When you give the pretty girl that ring, it'll be like I'm there, watching, all right? I'll be watching you, up in the stars." His mother was always talking about the stars, how she'd watch him from there, and he'd look up and visit. He had no idea what the hell she was talking about, but it seemed nice enough. _

_He looked at her for a long time. "Someday, when I'm big, Momma, I'm gonna get all the stars and stick 'em on the ground, so you can dance on 'em, okay? Just for you. Then you won't have to go away. You can stay here with me and Dad." He didn't have any doubts that once he was big enough, he'd be tall enough to do just that._

_"Okay." She said laughing a little, but a tear slipped down her cheek, falling onto the pillow._

_"Whatsa matter, momma?"__ It was the first time that she had ever cried in front of him before, and the sight unnerved him._

_"Momma's just tired." She shifted. "You wanna sleep in the big bed with me tonight? Daddy has to work late."_

_"Yeah."__ He said, snuggling closer. "Sing me the song 'bout the field, okay?"_

_She was holding him just a little tightly, but he didn't mind. "Okay, little man…" Softly, she stroked his hair, the words bubbling up, a sweet shadow of her former voice but one that was pretty all the same._

_"You'll remember me, as the west wind moves, along the fields of barely-" the words rose and fell just like the breeze, and he soon closed his eyes, listening to the murmur of her heart and the gentle vibration of her voice in her throat._

_In the last days, his father rarely left her side, except to go to work. He could still remember the image of his father, his wife gathered up in the house, walking from room to room, a methodical beat to his step, back and forth, forth and back, his mother's arms wound around his neck. Later, Seifer would recognize it as a waltz. His mother's death waltz. It was, perhaps, his only good lasting memory of his father._

_"I never made promises lightly, and there have been some that I've broken….but I swear, in the days still left-" her voice hitched a little here, sweetness catching on a mortal thorn, but she continued, her hands still lovingly stroking his hair, the beat of butterfly wings against his cheek. "That we'll walk in fields of gold."_

_He had smiled, imagining that he and his mother were dancing on a blanket of stars…above those fields of gold…._

_Seifer curled his fist around the ring, setting it on the desk beside the cot and rolling over. His mother died delirious with pain, and his father had followed soon after, although his father had been dead tohim the moment they put his mother in the ground. He'd lost two parents in one day._

_He lost everything, and woke up that day to find out that there weren't any fucking fields of gold. _

_He remembered standing in the rain in his best suit because they couldn't afford an umbrella...or his father had been too out of his mind to remember one.  He, his father, and some old man reading out of a big book were standing in the middle of a cemetery, staring down at a pine box in the ground. The dirt was quickly turning to mud, dripping down on the box in large splotches. Two men stood off to the side with shovels, looking bored. He didn't know why they were there, but he wished they'd leave. _

_His mother was in that box, sleeping, her hands folded on her chest and her best dress on, the one with the red flowers. She was wearing her black shoes with straps and gold buckles. He didn't know why she was wearing those. She said they'd hurt her feet. _

_He had never known his mother's family. He knew only that she had married against money, and now money wanted nothing more to do with her. _

_The willows whispered in the wind, drenched, and the gray stone slabs around them also appeared to weep. _

_"Into the earth, I walk in shadow, but let those shadows stray from my heart-"_

_His father smelled like vodka. He hadn't showered or slept. He stood behind Seifer, staring blankly down at the grave like he didn't recognize it, rain dripping down his coat and into his eyes. He didn't blink._

_"Let me release my sorrows and my pain, and let me walk in the light and ebb gently back into the slumber of time, where all pain is erased, where all tears are ended-let me cross this bridge to light through death's brief darkness-"_

_He wished the old man would shut up so he could wake up his mother and they could go home. Maybe they could eat at that diner on the corner that his mother liked. They always shared their fries together, and his dad cut his steak for him. The place smelled like pepper and there were peanut shells on the floor, and the fireplace was warm. His mom always let him have ice cream after._

_It was freezing here. His small jacket was soaked, and his hair was hanging down into his eyes. It was like the water was pulling him down into the mud, with her._

_"And now, I give my soul back unto the earth, and I am cleansed, I am born anew, let Hyne's grace embrace me and let my spirit be at peace. Let my soul soar into the endless heavens, and be free forever."_

_The two men started forward. He didn't understand what they were doing until they lifted their shovels and dumped a mound of sod onto his mother's pine box._

_Reality slapped him in the face._

_"No!" he shouted, running forward. "You can't do that! She's in there! My mom's in there!"_

_His father's hands were cutting into his shoulders, but he fought against them. "No! She'll be cold in there! Let me go! Let me **go**!" Wet, he wormed himself free, and flew at one of the men, knocking him down into the ground before he scrambled towards his mother's grave, mud filling his cuffs and his shoes and rain stinging his eyes. _

_"Momma!__ Wake up! We gotta go! Momma!"_

_His father dragged him back again, tackled him into the mud and nearly broke his arm trying to haul him up. He was screaming for his mother, but she wasn't coming. _

_The man got back up, and, doggedly,  the two began shoveling again. Slowly, the last of his mother's pine box disappeared from view as Seifer watched, helpless, trapped in his father's hard embrace._

_"You see that!" screamed his father. "You see that! She's dead! She isn't coming back!"_

_"Liar!__ **Liar**! She isn't dead!" he screamed. He wormed free again, and threw himself into the mud, clawing at the dirt. It only slipped through his fingers, however, and soon it all slipped through, sliding down, down, pulling his stomach with it. He screamed for her, again and again-_

_She was gone. She had said she would never leave him and she was gone._

_His father had gone long ago. He sat in the rain for another hour until the priest came and got him and drove him home._

_He cried himself sick that night, until his father stumbled into his room and beat the shit out of him, screaming at him to stop that awful noise, knocking out two of his baby teeth and smacking his head against the end table in his room until he threw up all over the floor. _

_It was the first time his father had hit him, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. _

_When he threw up, his father had started screaming all over again, then stumbled out in the rain, disappearing for the rest of the night. Seifer had waited until the house was quiet, then slunk into his parent's room, crawling onto his mother's side of the bed and smelling her faint perfume on the sheets and gripping her ring in his fist until the metal seemed to burn his skin. _

_He stared at the wall the entire night, studying the shadows and wishing that he was in the ground with his mother. It was then that the Skeleton Boy emerged._

_It was the first time he had conjured up the image…but it certainly would not be the last._

Sixteen years later, he studied that same circlet, watching the play of light on the band.

Narrowing his eyes, he threw the ring across the room, rolling over in his bed and onto a sitting position, burying his head in his hands. Garden would leave Balamb soon, and wherever it landed, he was getting the fuck off. He was going to find another bottle of booze and another gil-an-hour hotel and finish the legacy his father had started. The one that burned in his veins, the one that now, throbbed in his head in a constant beat of nothing.

His blood was poison, and he was tired of fighting it.

"Time to end this," he muttered into the darkness, unaware of how true his words were about to become.


	27. End of the Innocence

Disclaimer: I own a dwindling bank account and a sassy dog…not Squaresoft.

O' beautiful, for spacious skies  
But now those skies are threatening  
They're beating plowshares into swords  
For this tired old man that we elected king

… You can lay your head back on the ground  
And let your hair fall all around me  
Offer up your best defense  
But this is the end  
This is the end of the innocence….

-Don Henley….an appropriate song, especially for this chapter.

Chapter 24

Irvine had never been so happy to be off of a boat in his life. Between Gzarth's puking and Zell's bitching, he was beginning to feel a little seasick himself. He opened his hand to regard the hotel receipt that had formerly been crumpled in his pocket:

 _Grym's __Inn__: __Suite__ 126__. _

"Hurry up, you guys!" called Irvine behind him, shouldering his bag as the boat docked. The lights of Dollet loomed in the night, hitting the cobblestone in distant dark hues that made the town look more peaceful than it was. In reality, Dollet had a weak government, a dying economy, and only a modest tourist income at best. The place was an old-school base just waiting for a group of well-funded terrorists to grapple over it. Irvine knew that well enough- during his time at Galbadia, he'd gone on several missions to rid the towns of several suspicious factions.

He hoped, however, this time would prove to be nothing. He was in no hurry to encounter what promised to be a well-funded group on minimal weapons and cavalry. Sniping was only useful if he could spot a leader, and no intelligent terrorist faction distinguished theirs. 

He patted the lining of his coat, where the familiar bulge of Exeter lay. He wouldn't be able to carry his trusty weapon with him tomorrow, but he never slept well in the field unless the familiar outline of the gun lay beneath his pillow. Seeing as he couldn't look forward to Selphie's warmth next to him tonight, he could at least look forward to that singular comfort. He probably wouldn't get any sleep with Zell in the room anyway. That boy snored like a congested Grendel.

He glanced behind him, waiting for Zell and Gzarth's outlines to appear over the hill. "Grym's Inn", if he remembered correctly, was one step up from a roach motel and about a thousand steps down from any hotel in Esthar. He sighed, staring up at the moon and watching his breath cloud in the cold, sapphire night sky.

The mission would be completed by tomorrow, and they could get back to the Garden…back home. He couldn't explain the urgency in his chest…it was the same strange sensation that always jumped through his heart just before squeezed Exeter's trigger. Whatever it was, he couldn't seem to shake the lingering feeling that something was very, very close…and simultaneously, now an ocean away. 

…

…

…

_"Today's lesson is going to focus exclusively on Draw points and correct casting procedure. Now, this is the correct way to cast for beginners. Motion up, down, fingers loose and extended. Keep the muscles relaxed, or you'll stall the spell, especially when the magic you're casting is fresh from a Draw point. Can someone tell me how drawing off a second party is different from drawing directly from a Draw point? Aerin."_

_"A second party source is instantaneously diluted by the interacting bond cohesion that occurs when a second-party draw is cast. The spell will be inherently weaker than if it were converted directly from a Draw point. Only experienced casters should utilize raw magic converted from Draw points, unless an emergency situation occurs."_

_"Very good, Aerin. Instructor Green will go over exact procedure with all of you later in lab today. You'll be drawing and  casting low-level Thundaga and Fire variants, so please have those with you this afternoon. Now, moving on to Draw point detection. Tell me, from your reading, what is the best way to detect a Draw point when out in the field? Mr. Almasy."_

_A shrug._

_"Come on, if none of you can answer simple procedural guides, I'm not authorizing you for labs."_

_A collective groan rose up in the classroom, but she put up her hand to silence it. "This is directly from the reading, class. There isn't any reason you shouldn't know it. Again, what is the best way to detect a Draw point? Mr. Garek."_

_The young man shrugged from his bored slouch in his seat. _

_"I suggest doing the reading next time, Brek. Mr. Leonhart, what's the answer?"_

_"Absence of flora and fauna in the area within a given radius. Abnormal concentrations of nitrates in the soil. The radius of the land desolation will be equivalent to the size and power of the raw magic within the given Draw point." Squall looked bored. Then again, Squall always looked bored._

_"Very good. What is it, Mr. Almasy, for the last time?"_

_"When are we going on a _**real**_ field trial?." A collective chuckle rose up._

_She put her hands on her hips. "When you can demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the material."_

_Seifer's expression darkened. Squall's expression bordered on a smile._

_She continued. "Now, I'm going to go over some review questions for the test next week. Can anyone tell me what proper entry procedure is in a hostile situation-"_

**You have to feel it-**

**His prettiest little thing-**

Quistis startled awake, arm jerking on the table and nearly sending the contents of the table flying. Cerberus barked, then continued his wet onslaught, nearly removing her cheek with his large, wet tongue.

Quistis lifted her head, only to find that a sheet of paper was stuck to her cheek. She plucked it away and squinted at it- it was the letter from the D.S. Research center. Last night's events came back slowly, pouring into her brain like lukewarm water.

Fighting with Seifer, making phone calls to the research center, her disturbing conversation with Dr. Willshire-

_Shit_.

Cerberus cocked his head and let out a low, soft bark. Evidently she'd said the world out loud.

"I'm going nuts," Quistis muttered into her hands as she got to her feet, squinting in the bright overhead lights of the lab. Cerberus raised his dark head at the motion, yawning as he also lumbered to his feet, wagging his tail in expectation of a new adventure.

"No more sleeping in the lab for us, Cerberus." She looked up, rubbing the crook of her back where she'd evidently rested on it incorrectly. She had to go and retrieve Seifer, and re-run those tests on him. Granted, Seifer was not going to be any happier seeing her than he was going to be about the tests, but they were for his own good.

Her conversation with Dr. Willshire had left her more confused than ever. In the past weeks, Seifer hadn't been exhibiting any of the symptoms of latent poisoning- no loss of vitality or vigor, no loss of appetite or sustained discoloration around the wound. Granted, she hadn't had the chance to observe him as thoroughly as a doctor might have, but Quistis was certain that if Seifer had really sustained the damage that the DS Research lab reports suggested, he would be exhibiting at least one relevant symptom.

_Wouldn't he? Perhaps all the support magic she had cast on him, supplemented with Kadowaki's saline runs, had rid him of the poison. But at those toxicity levels, she doubted it._

Quistis checked the clock on the far wall. It was the middle of the night, still quiet in the lab and the surrounding hallways. It was late, but she had to run the tests now. She had to know, and Seifer's sleep be damned. Dr. Kadowaki wouldn't be up for at least a few hours yet. No matter. She had apprenticed enough Medbay hours with Kadowaki to draw and run standardized blood tests and perform a simple wound/tissue analysis. Walking over to a separate station, she lit a Bunsen burner and withdrew a series of test tubes from the counter, procuring a few fresh needle packets from the drawer. Ten gauge, twenty, or fifty? Remembering Seifer's harsh words to her earlier, she selected the ten gauges.

He didn't understand. She hadn't wanted the position in the first place- they had never gotten along, never understood one another, or perhaps they had just understood one another too well. She would have refused the assignment in a second, if they hadn't sent Matron to convince her and Cid to guilt trip her thereafter.

She hadn't hated him, but she'd distrusted him. She always had. He was volatile, unpredictable, driven by childish notions that had no place in a peaceful society. She had wanted nothing more than to get him up to standard or fail him, so long as he was out of her life as soon as possible.

But then, something had happened.

He wasn't what she had prepared herself for. He was subdued, broken, and lonely, and she had wound up reaching out to him in understanding, despite her best instincts. No matter how close Rajin and Fujin were to Seifer, she knew they'd never understand him completely. Seifer had to be too strong around them- he was their leader, their glue. Inwardly, she knew Seifer was constantly battling himself, just as she was. The others, her own friends…they didn't understand.

They'd formed a kind of kinship in their self-inflicted solitude. And then suddenly he'd been opened to her, and charming, and the warmth of his hand had unnerved her in a way that she'd never allowed anything else to. His humor, once scathing and immature, became a biting warmth in her belly when they were together…strange, but not altogether unpleasant.

That night on the train, she'd told him things she hadn't dared to share with anything else. She'd always been Quistis Trepe the soldier, not Quistis Trepe the dreamer. And he'd allowed her that, listened, and he hadn't laughed at her. He'd allowed her to be what she wanted, rather than what was wanted _of_ her.

And in return…

…she'd crushed him.

Seifer Almasy was now a creature that survived by a shred of pride, carried forth by the slim hope that the future would eventually erase the past. And what had she done? She'd spit his past in his face, let it slip that this chance was no more than a re-evaluation of his ability to be allowed to _exist_ in society, much less succeed. She'd taken the last shred of his pride, and stripped him bare.

She got up from her stool, running a shaky hand through her hair. She had to find him, tell him-

_Tell him what?_

…**something**.

"This is Redd13, do you copy? Redd13, over."

Silence.

"This is Base B to Redd13, copy. Have you reached your destination? Over."

"Destination reached, plans to proceed as normal. Over."

"Redd13, speak up. The static is overriding you. Over."

"That's not static, BaseB. That's Blue11. Over."

"Oh."

"….I miss ya, Base B."

"…..This is most unprofessional radio conduct, Redd13."

"…"

"….Get back here ASAP. BaseB over and out."

"Redd13 copy. Over and out."

Selphie sat back in her chair, removing her headphones and letting out a great sigh as she stared through Garden's great domed windows at the cloudy night sky.

"I miss you too, Irvy," she whispered.

…

…

…

Irvine switched off his radio then leaned back in the hotel bed which he was fairly sure was infested with rats, seeing as it moved pretty consistently without the prompt of a quarter. He was still dressed in his dragonskin duster and boots, having the eerie feeling that whoever used the unclean sheets last had done so for no more than an hour. He put in his ear plugs, then rolled his eyes as he realized it was going to be a very, very long night.

Zell, or Blue11, was sawing logs in the bed beside him. Or maybe sawing entire forests was more accurate. Gzarth was in the closet, mumbling to himself, and had been for the past hour. Hyne only knew what Zell had told him to do in there, but he was too tired to guess.

Sighing, Irvine threw his extra pillow at Zell, who mumbled, rolled over, and picked up right where he had left off. The expert marksman groaned, pulling his sheets over his head and praying to Hyne that the damned hotel was infested with rats only. One spider, and he was sleeping in the damned alleyway.

Ironically, the alleyway was probably cleaner.

…

…

…

The halls were completely deserted, the secondary lights flickering along the polished linoleum. The hum of Garden's engines was warm and distant, the metallic throb of a soldier's womb.

Quistis closed her eyes for a moment, the vibrations of the floor spreading through her body like a mother's distant heartbeat. And in a way, it was. For as long as she could remember, it was this melody that had sung her to sleep. It was in the quiet of the night, when all but Garden slept, that Garden became the home that she could not imagine leaving.

Seifer's dorm loomed up, she found herself dreading another confrontation. He was going to be less than pleased at being woken up, not to mention the fact that _she_ was the one waking him up.

She buzzed the room door. No answer.

Impatiently, she pressed the com button again. No answer.

No matter. She would have Dr. Kadowaki run the tests in the morning. She wouldn't have to put up with him after all. A mixture of disappointment and relief flooded through her as she turned to leave.

"The fuck do you want _now_?"

She jumped at the sound, turning to regard a fully awake Seifer Almasy, dressed in black sweatpants and little else, rubbing furiously at the scar that marred his forehead. Exhaustion and anger clouded his gaze, and she felt guilty for disturbing his sleep.

"What, this the final task that your lord and master sent you on?"

Wonderful. Quistis Trepe. The person highest on the list of people he wished to avoid for the rest of his hopefully brief existence. And that fucking mutt was with her too, looking for all the world like it wanted to take a bite out of his leg.

Truthfully though, Trepe's expression wasn't all that different.

"I ask again, what errand has brought you here at oh…I dunno…" he glanced behind him. "Two in the morning? You get a raise for interrupting my sleep, or what? Or did you want to mind fuck me some more? We could talk some more about my daddy issues, about how I tried to compress time, and let's not forget my Oedipus complex-"

She positively glared.  "Shut up, Seifer."

"Well, what else would it be? You don't make pleasure calls."

"That isn't fair."

"Ha! Fair? Don't talk to me about _fair_. So, what **do** you want, Trepe?" he asked. It was the same tone she'd heard as his Instructor, filled with scorn and devoid of trust. More than that, though, it was tired.

It chilled her.

"I need you to come down to the lab for some tests" she said. Her own voice sounded dead to her.

He looked at her as if she had just announced she was an alien from the moon. "You _what_?"

"You heard me. I just spoke with someone from the D.S. research center about your test results-"

"Fuck your test results. I'm busy." His voice was cutting.

"What could you possibly be _busy_ with at this hour of the night?"

"Slitting my wrists. Banging the entire Garden Festival Committee. None of your fucking business. Some people even try to sleep at this hour."

"I don't care what-" she began.

"I've gathered that," he snapped.

"If I didn't care about **you**," she snapped, "I wouldn't be here, you ass."

His eyes narrowed, as if torn between scorn and surprise. Scorn apparently was winning out.

Her gaze sunk into his, attaching her no-bullshit hooks to his will and yanking it. "I need some blood and tissue samples," she said, before staring back at the floor.;

"So? What the hell is that to _me_? Get them off some other unsuspecting fool."

"I need **your** blood and tissue samples, you idiot." Quistis regarded him hotly. "You either come with me now," she snapped, losing her already thin hold on her patience, "Or I'll be back in ten minutes with a few razors and an aluminum baking pan and I'll blood-let you myself."

"Tch, why not? It would be the next logical step, wouldn't it?" he sneered.

She didn't answer. Instead, she broke the stare, turning to stalk towards the infirmary. Nothing was worth this.

Rubbing his scar, Seifer followed after her. "What the fuck is **your** problem?" he shouted after her.

She glared at him. "Will you shut up?" she hissed. "You're going to get us in trouble."

He threw his arms out in exasperation. "First you wake me up, then you drag me down here, now you tell me to shut up? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

She turned on him, furious, jabbing her finger into his chest. "Someone who's watching your ass," she hissed. "Which is more than I can say for you."

He rolled his eyes. "You've got a funny way of watching my ass, Trepe."

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the infirmary, each watching the other out of the corner of their eyes.

They reached the infirmary without incident, and once in the lab portion of it, Quistis set about pouring chemical sets and preparing slides, holding coverslips up to the light to make sure they were free of particles. At a loss of what to do, Seifer gazed around the room, fascinated by the play of the light on the chemical vials and the pervasive scent of carbon compounds that hung heavy in the air. He'd seen the infirmary, sure, but to see the much-famed Kadowaki's lab was something else entirely. He almost chucked, remembering Rajin's theories about all the human experiments that the doctor performed. Poor Rajin always had been fucking paranoid about those shots. Fujin all but had to drag him by the ear to get him in there.

_And what happens when you leave them again, asked his conscience. Will they forgive you this time?_ They were, essentially, the only family he had…

But they had each other now. They'd never **needed** him, not really.

It sat a little uneasy in his stomach that there wasn't a soul out there that _needed_ him, really needed him…without his half-brained romantic dream to keep him company, he was little more than a traveling hobo with some military training. And what half-crazed hobo didn't have at least a little military training? It was the military training that fucked him up initially, after all. No, that was a lie. Lying awake for hours, locked in a pantry with rats the size of housecats and spitting out baby teeth hadn't done much for him, either.

And yet, teaching a man to hate and kill his fellow man meant you had to break at least a little of his humanity. A little humanity was all some people had. Some had even less.

_How much is left in me?_

"Take off your shirt."

"_What_?" he glared at her.

"Did I stutter?" She glared back at him as set the vials down on the counter, and tapped the syringe. Seifer eyed her suspiciously, even as he peeled off his shirt and threw it carelessly onto the floor.

"Sit down."

"What's next? Rolling over?" Really, he wasn't sure who he was more angry at. Her for using him, or him for forgetting he was being used in the first place.

She looked up, and walked briskly over, setting a metal tray on the side of the chair. "Maybe later."

He wondered why he didn't want to hit her. He was pissed off enough to. Damnit, he couldn't wait till he was out of here, too drunk to know his own name, much less the correct day of the week. Maybe there he could forget how to hope and just what shade of blue Trepe's eyes turned when she smiled. Maybe there he could forget for good.

Whoever said alcohol wasn't an escape had obviously never drank.

Quistis, for her part, tried not to look at him. His arms were much better toned than they had been before, and she noticed fully, for the first time, the tattoo that took up the better portion of his right bicep. She had seen it before, of course, but the situation had always rendered her observation brief or inconsequential.

It was a large black ink rendition of the fire cross that was sewn into his jacket. It was an angry looking carving, almost sinister in its design. When had he gotten it?

"Fourteen, in Dollet." He replied, shortly, staring at the wall.

She colored. She hadn't realized she'd thought it out loud.

Making sure the needle was attached firmly to the tubing, she tied a rubber tourniquet around his upper arm, her fingers stinging from the warmth of contact. His muscle jerked in response, but he continued to stare at the wall.

"You're going to feel a small stick," she told him, quietly.

He sneered. "I've had worse, believe it or not." It was an understatement. His body was a myriad of scars, his back an almost jigsaw puzzle of jagged pink lines. Some had healed better than others.

Where had he gotten them all?

She was gentle when she inserted the needle, and quick. She'd obviously practiced quite a bit, but then, he knew, Quistis never did anything by half measures.  She either did it well or didn't do it.

She quickly taped the needle to his arm, and both watched the warm, dark blood spurt into the waiting plastic coil. She quickly attached a plastic clip to tourniquet the flow, then gathered the vials, writing labels on each one with a delicately tipped pen.

"Any pain in the arm?"

_No pain that makes sense_. "No."

"Discoloration? Loss of appetite?"

"No."

"Loss in stamina?"

"I don't know, why not ask the Garden Festival Committee?"

"Being a smartass only makes this take longer, you know."

"No."

"No, what?"

"No, I feel fucking fine, all right?"

Silence.

Predictably, Seifer broke it. "You gonna tell me why the fuck you dragged me down here in the middle of the night, or is this some sort of guessing game?"

Scowling, she walked over to the counter, gathered something, then threw a large packet of information onto his lap.

He leafed through the first few pages with his free hand, then looked back up at her. "You sent that bullet to the D.S. Research Center.'

She nodded.

"Why?"

"The time and effect of the poison was unusual." Replied Quistis, simply. "I wanted it analyzed."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, and?"

She set the vials down in her wooden holder one by one. "And, as you can see from the findings, the poison in that bullet was highly unusual. I want to see if there are any traces of it left in your system." She replied.

"Why would you care if there were?" he returned. "As you've said, I'm no longer your _responsibility_."

"I cared enough to save your ass back in Tromedia," she snapped. "It would logically follow that I'd care to retain your current state of being _alive_, wouldn't it?"

Silence. He thought of the glaring bruises on her inner arms and instantly felt like an ass. Then again, he felt like an ass most of the time when he was around her…well, because he was.

"Where'd you learn all this?" he asked, gesturing at his arm, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"When I was first admitted to Garden, Dr. Kadowaki took me under her wing." replied Quistis quietly. "I learned basic field medicine, as well as basic testing and analysis procedures. When I was first admitted into Garden, I spent a lot of time there." She smiled, wryly, remembering, and he suppressed a smirk. He had spent enough time there himself as an early cadet. He used to sneak into the Training Center after hours all the time to torment the grats...although, sometimes, bigger things than grats decided to bite.

Whatever the hell she was currently calling that dog was apparently knowledgeable about places such as the vets, and kept a good distance from Quistis' line-up of needles. The oversized mongrel was dozing fitfully in a corner. Thank Hyne. That dog made him nervous. Anything waist high that had a set of cutlery for teeth generally did.

Quistis knelt over and quickly filled three test tubes in succession before resetting the clip and settling the glass tubes in the tray. She placed a piece of gauze gently over the needle stick as she pulled it out.

"Hold your arm up," she murmured, grabbing the tray and setting it over on the counter opposite him. She moved with quiet assurance, and it impressed him despite himself. Trepe: soldier, teacher, field medic...the woman wore so many masks...

He wondered, not for the first time, which one was the real Quistis Trepe. Maybe, he thought, it was none of them, but the girl who had sat beside him on the train to Balamb, her dreams in her eyes and the wind in her hair. It was the one he'd liked the best, anyway.  
_  
He hadn't been fair to her.  
_  
The thought struck him like cold water.

She hadn't wanted to take him on as a pupil again any more than he had wanted to _be_ her pupil- he had seen it from the look in her eyes that day in Cid's office. For some reason, though, she had, and he knew that when Quistis Trepe made a decision to do something, she did not to it in half-measures. She'd forced him to read the books, to learn, and without knowing it, she'd helped him to realize the beauty in order- her beauty, specifically. She'd chased after him, ignored his every attempt to push her away, and after he had shredded her pride, and exploited the most guarded parts of her nature, pushed her away and reveled in the look of pain in her eyes-

She'd taken care of him, protected him, and dragged him down to the med lab at two in the morning, stricken, to test his blood.

He looked up at her, as if seeing her for the first time- Quistis Trepe, not the soldier, not the Instructor, but the person, a creature of captivating flesh and bone and _feeling_...stubborn as a fucking mule, but determined, too….

She turned to him with a piece of gauze and medical tape. "Hold out your arm, please," she said quietly, surprised when he complied without complaint. She leaned forward and gently smoothed out the tape, sending a fiery jolt up his arm that had nothing to do with the sting of the ethanol.

His eyes narrowed. "You really are a fucking paradox, you know that?"

She gazed back at him. "I could say the same for you."

"Oh, really? How so?"

She folded her arms. "You wanted a second chance from others, but this whole time, you've been unwilling to give yourself a chance. I'd say that's a pretty large inconsistency." She leaned over with a swath of gauze, pressing it firmly against his arm as she applied the bandage.

He laughed.  "And _you_? Which one are you? The Instructor, the ice-queen, the background friend? Do **you** know?" He gazed at her, and suddenly, his hand was over hers. She jumped. "Which is it now?" And then, softer, "Which one are you now?"

She narrowed her eyes at him as she peeled a piece of gauze and tape and placed it over the needle stick. "Don't."

He was standing now, looming over her. "Don't what?" he whispered, trailing his fingertips along the exposed skin of her arm. Her shiver was not lost on either of them.

She met his gaze. "Stop it." She turned away, setting the wooden test tube holder on the counter and scrunching up her shoulders in a vulnerable manner he'd never seen on her before.

She stared at the countertop. _Steady, Quistis. Don't do anything stupid._

His eyes bore into her back. "Don't you feel anything? Ever?"

She glared at him. "Of course I do," she spat. _Too much. I feel too much, all the time._

"Really….and just what do you feel about _me_, Trepe?" Dangerous question. He wanted to take it back instantly. And yet, here it was, the moment of truth, the question neither of them could answer.

Silence overtook the room…it was almost antiseptic.

It was what he had expected, but it didn't lessen the sting.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," he muttered.

He retrieved his shirt from the floor, peeling it over his head and walking out the door. Her next words stopped him.

"I…believe in you. I've always believed in you."

He looked at her back for one long, disconcerting moment. For a moment, she thought he was going to say something, but just as quickly, he turned and walked quickly out, the doors whirring shut behind him.

Quistis shoulders slumped, defeat coursing through her veins like ice water.

"I've lost him."

_Stupid girl…you never had him._

…

…

…

"Hey, hurry up, Gzarth!" muttered  Zell, glancing over his shoulder as the three made their way to the heart of the town. They'd set Gwarth out on a scouting mission on the left end of town, while the other two took the east and west portions.

The three were dressed in regular civ attire for the day- all of them wore caps to cover up their hair, and Zell had covered the entire left side of his face with plastic, flesh colored tape that blended in with a little 'paint'. There were times Zell wondered at the intelligence of getting a tattoo on his face when the majority of his work was undercover.

The clothes were all non-descript, white shirts with loose-fitting pants. And with good reason- none of them wished to carry the outline of the heavy arsenal which was currently strapped to their skins.

Zell carried a small remote detonator in his cargo pocket and a pair of steel knuckles in the other. Irvine carried an assembly-type Valiant with some AP and stun-type ammo tucked inside his left sock. The trademark tattoo on his face had been blotted out with plenty of thick concealer. Neither had trusted Gzarth with the concussion grenades, so they'd taped them to the only other available area left- their upper thighs. All had socks filled with smoke capsules. Gzarth's heavy, clomping walk was making Irvine a bit nervous.

"So what'd you turn up?" Irvine asked in a low voice. They were far enough from the busy part of town, but he was taking no chances.

"Jack squat. I asked 'em about Xyionn, they looked at me like I was off my gourd. Some guy asked me if I was retarded."

"I'm not surprised," replied Irvine.

"Screw you, man. What'd you turn up?"

Irvine shrugged. "The natives seem pretty riled up about whatever the hell this Xyionn is. I haven't seen old ladies look this pissed since Ulty."

"You think it's a terrorist faction, doncha?" asked Zell in a whisper.

Irvine shook his head. "I don't wanna jump to conclusions, but it can't be good, whatever it is. Still, everyone's so tight-lipped about it, I dunno how the hell we're gonna _find_ it. It might take weeks."

Zell sighed. "We don't have that kinda time."

"I know."

The two fell into thoughtful silence, watching the path for their third comrade.

"Zell, quit adjust'n those c-nades." Hissed Irvine.

"They _pinch_, man!" whined Zell.

"Listen t'me, you kick loose one o' those pins, y'got bigger problems. You'll be a friggin' _eunuch_, man."

Zell rolled his eyes. "Okay, _Ma_."

Irvine glanced behind him. "Man, I can't believe you told Gwarth t' sleep in the closet last night."

Zell chuckled. "Man, I can't believe he _listened_ to me!"

"The hell you tell him, anyway?"

"I told him we were conducting an all-night surveillance of the area, so he should use our new apparatus to scan it for lithium compounds…y'know, signs of bombs n' stuff."

"So that's why I found him in the closet with your Ma's old garage door opener, pressin' the green button every five minutes?"

Zell grinned.

Irvine shook his head. "You're goin' t'hell, y'know that."

Zell shrugged. "Payback's a bitch. After that map incident, Arya wouldn't talk to me for a week, and you'd better believe I lived like a friggin' monk for another two."

"Huh. She seems like such a laid back gal."

"Ha! You didn't see her. Those rabies vaccines made her nuts. I thought she was gonna bite _me_!" Zell's following grin was devilish. "'Sides, I like fuckin' with him. He's such a tool."

"At least he didn't break his ankle tryin' t' ride an airborne scooter."

Zell narrowed his eyes at his friend. "Fuck you, man. I was _this_ close."

"Yeah, right. Hey, here comes Gzarth."

The young man was jogging up the path, each step making Irvine wince. _If he doesn't set off those smoke capsules, it'll be a friggin' miracle._

"Townsfolk aren't really talkative here," he said, gasping for breath once he reached them. "When I asked about Xyionn, they looked at me like I was asking for the plague."

"Get any information?"

Gzarth shook his head. "Got quite a few unwelcome vibes, but that was all."

Irvine sighed. "Well, shit. This is gonna take longer than we thought, fellas."

Zell  considered. "Maybe we just haven't been asking at the right places. Maybe we need to, you know, dig a little deeper."

Irvine shook his head. "The closest thing Dollet has to a dark underbelly is the tavern where occasionally, one of the lifer's'll drop dead from too much Cap'n an' coke."

"Well, then, we'll start there!" exclaimed Zell.

"Good idea," echoed Gzarth.

"You both just wanna eat," accused Irvine.

Gzarth shrugged. "We have to start somewhere, don't we? Maybe the natives will talk better drunk."

Zell regarded his comrade with surprise. "Gzarth, for the first and possibly the last time in our lives, you and I are in total agreement."

Irvine sighed. Two stomachs against one brain…he couldn't win. "All right, let's go."

Besides, he'd heard good things about the clam chowder.

…

…

…

Quistis stared down at her toast, absently stirring her coffee. There had to be something she was missing…

But what? For the love of Hyne, what? Groaning, she let her head droop forward to bang hollowly against the table.

"May I join you, Quistis?" a bemused voice rumbled above her. "Or am I interrupting something?"

She jumped, sending the spoon in her hand flying across the table and into a waiting grasp. She looked up to see Serabin, immaculate as always, holding a tray and a spoon and wearing a very amused smile. Chuckling, he set the spoon down next to her. She flushed.

"I'm sorry. I didn't-"

Serabin's smile grew wider. "I'm only grateful you weren't holding that whip of yours. I might be short an eye. May I?" he gestured to the seat beside her.

"Oh yes, of course." Sitting up, slightly, she moved over the pile of books and papers as the young man sat down.

"Busy morning?" asked Serabin, raising an eyebrow.

"Busy night," replied Quistis, running a hand through her hair, tucking a hunk of it behind her ear.

_That was an understatement._

Serabin glanced around, his gaze on the uneasy side. "Where's that…dog of yours?"

Quistis shrugged. "Cerberus? I've been informed by Zell that he's taken a particular liking to the Training Center as a lavatory." She glanced behind her. "He said not to worry, but…do you think I should go after him? There are an awful lot of creatures in there, even at the outer perimeters…"

Serabin rolled his eyes. "I pity the T-Rexaurs."

"What?"

"He'll be fine, I'm sure. Squall mentioned you were doing a follow-up on the IGCS mission," said the young man, setting his own files aside and opening a cellophane wrapped sandwich.

Surprise flowed through Quistis at the mention of Squall's reference to of her little side quest, seeing as she'd had to fight him tooth and gil on it from the beginning.

"Yes. I assume you've read the mission report."

Serabin nodded. "SeeD Tilmitt's method of penetrating the base was particularly…interesting."

"Selphie's methods always are,' replied Quistis, smiling as she took a small bite of toast.

 "Have you been successful thus far in your follow-up efforts?"

"Not really," replied Quistis, shuffling a stack of papers before setting them off to the side. "There's no faction I can think of that has the technology to implement something like this, much less the ambition."

Serabin looked thoughtful. "Oh there are plenty with the _ambition_, Quistis. It's the resources that are lacking. This organization is obviously a large one."

"What makes you say that?" asked Quistis, although the statement was nothing she hadn't considered before. Perhaps the reasoning for the statement was different, however, and she awaited Serabin's response. Perhaps they knew more, now. After all, several covert operations had been dispatched to investigate the IGCS mission failure- maybe now the teams were beginning to report back.

"Because of the nature of the trap. It was a spider web military op. The entire tower had been rigged to blow for some time. Why then?"

"To take out SeeD forces." Replied Quistis.

"No. The terrorists knew the casualties would be few. According to the report, there were more than enough men inside that building to take care of a standard SeeD team of three. It was to send a message."

"To set up a distraction, then? To frame SeeD?" surmised Quistis, taking a sip of her coffee.

Serabin nodded. "It certainly seems that way, with the way that political appropriations is now tangling up our operations."

"So, whoever organized this attack had intricate knowledge of the Garden Board."

"And B. Garden's previous problems with politicians." Added Serabin.

"Another Garden, then?"

"Not necessarily. Trabia reports that they'd been sending messages for days, and Galbadia reports the same. The IGCS was a brilliant symbol of unity, but the sad fact was that it was rarely used aside for establishing locations and for occasional cooperative endeavors. Whoever triggered the IGCS failure had to know their intentions would go unnoticed for quite some time-"

"…long enough to booby trap an entire building."

The two exchanged a thoughtful stare.

Serabin took a drink of water. "So, in summation, we have a well-funded group with enough patience to wire a building and wait several weeks to trigger it, with intricate knowledge of both political and military relations, and one with an apparently intense hatred for Balamb Garden." Serabin glanced at his watch, then stood. "Excuse me, Quistis, but I have a meeting with the returning mission teams from the other Gardens."

"Yes, of course," replied Quistis. "Thank you for sitting with me." She smiled, softly, an expression that did not go unappreciated by the young man.

"It was my pleasure," replied Serabin, "And also my hope that we will be able to have lunch together sometime when there is more…pleasant conversation to be had."

She nodded. "I'd like that." She watched the young man retreat- tall, well-built, and extremely well mannered. Older, well-established…why not?  Yes, why not? It wasn't as if she had anything tying her down, no promise of anything else in the future, that was for certain, so why shouldn't she go to lunch with an attractive young man who asked her so politely?

_Yes, why the hell not?_

A loud bark brought her out of her self-tirade. Cerberus had retuned from the Training Center, panting happily…and was that a Grat tentacle hanging out of his mouth?

No time for that now.

She glanced back down at the sea of books spread in front of her, and sighed.

"…and I'm right back where I started." Finished Quistis, resting her chin in her hand with a sigh, her reverie interrupted by a message blaring over the intercom.

One that would change their lives forever.

…

…

…

The entire tavern seemed to be lit by a single flickering light bulb, and the ceiling was dripping a dark, sticky substance that was better left to someone else's imagination.

The wooden booth was filled with scrawlings from bored customers, not the least of which was 'Gorman's Pub: where the roaches are always in season."

Irvine was inclined to agree.

As if on cue, another palm-sized roach dropped from the ceiling, landing in a water glass with a loud plop.

"Charmin'." Muttered Irvine, folding his arms and eyeing his water glass with mute distaste. There went the rest of his lunch. It was pouring outside, rain dripping down the gutters and thunder rattling the structure of the already shaky building.

None of them was looking forward to walking back.

Their search for information had thus far yielded 34 wary looks, one shunning from an old woman with a very hard cane, and Gzarth had nearly started a bar fight by literally and then figuratively stepping on a large, heavily intoxicated man's toes.

Now the three sat in a dark corner, sulking into their soup bowls and trying to find an alternative course of action.

Gzarth looked thoughtfully up from his soup bowl. "I don't understand it. Obviously these people all have some idea about what Xyionn is, but nobody's talking."

Zell, the only one who's appetite seemed unhampered by the rustic surroundings and falling ceiling decorations, looked up from his second bowl of clam chowder. "Ash gnot sprisng…feyre obshiosfy fared fitless ob whatvr ga fell shyion is."

"As always, Zell, real eloquently spoken," remarked Irvine, staring up at the ceiling. "Between you an' the roaches, I've completely lost my appetite."

"Then you won't be needing that bowl of soup," replied Zell, inching the dish over to his end of the table and wasting no time in digging in. Irvine swore, not for the first time that Zell could eat anywhere and anything.

"Well, I s'pose we'll go back to the hotel, then, huh?" asked Gzarth, setting down his spoon. "I mean, there's nothing else we can do right now, is there?"

Before Irvine could reply, a hooded figure ducked into the booth, dark coat dripping with rain. Irvine resisted the urge to reach for his gun.

"Fa helg?" Zell began, frowning, mouth full of clam chowder.

The figure put up a hand. It was a short little man, no higher than Irvine's waist, and about as round. "I am told you've been seeking the truth."

Irvine cocked an eyebrow, but shrugged at his mission partners. "An' if we have?"

"The truth, the truth, dangerous thing, the truth. Lies all around…all around." The figure glanced around nervously, rubbing his hands together. "Yes…yes…nobody wants to hear the truth these days. Gil in their ears, society wrapped around their tongues, the Man on their back. Beasts of mortal burden. Cow-eyed followers of unrefined sin. Poison in the mouths of _fools_." Beady little eyes narrowed from beneath the hood.

All three SeeDs exchanged a baffled look.

"So, you're from Xyionn?" asked Gzarth, before Irvine and Zell cast him sharp look.

"Ha! Can you name the air that gives you breath? Voice your own deliverance with deliberate syllable from your corrupt tongue?"

"Ummm….yeah?" Gzarth stuttered, unsure of how to answer.

"Exactly! You men seek the enlightenment of the chosen? You seek the clarity that extends beyond muddled flesh and frustrated construction?"

"Uhhhh…..sure?"

"Then come along." The hooded little figure gestured wildly, indicating for them to follow.

Zell shoved his hands into his front pockets, where Irvine knew he was keeping a pair of titanium knuckles, and nodded. Gzarth swallowed, then nodded as well. Irvine got up, then followed the short little man out into the rain, an uneasy feeling curling in his belly.

…

…

…

He had tried for the past hour to pack, but finally gave up after nearly tearing his hair out in frustration. He hadn't bothered to turn the lights on. He sat at the edge of the bed, wet from a shower, naked, hands folded as he stared down at the cardboard box in front of him, eyes swimming in and out of focus.

_Fucking Trepe._

'I believe in you. I have always believed in you.'

And what the hell was he supposed to do with _that_?

He stared down into the dark recesses of the box, watching the water drip from his forehead and plop onto the moist cardboard below. Old hand-made bullets for target practice glimmered from an old sock, old notes from Trepe's class mostly filled with lewd drawings and bored sketches. A bunch of old, mismatched socks, a patch from the Disciplinary Committee, and an old uniform he'd rarely bothered to wear. Dimly lit pictures of a summer in Timber stared back up at him, his smile distant and cocky, arms casually draped around a girlish Rinoa's shoulders, whose smile was always just a little too bright for him. Their pain was too different. He knew that now.

This life…the life in this box….was already over. It seemed almost superficial, a bunch of lies from another time. Then what was left?

Nothing. Nothing except for her fucking hope.

Damn her, damn her every way from sundown to sunrise for making him feel that…that _thing_ again. That burning, almost wishful churning inside his gut, the one he had sworn, _never again… _

It's over.

He got to his feet, and running his hands through his hair, he kicked the box across the room, watching with a mixture of anger and bitter satisfaction as its contents splattered across the small space.

What had he expected to happen? Become SeeD, and have his past sins melt away? Become SeeD, and become a liability on every mission? Every action would have to be explained, documented, painstakingly watched…he would be under constant surveillance…an added radical for every already unstable mission. Becoming SeeD was not the answer, because there simply were no answers.

There was no answer to his past. There was no answer to his future. He had wiped every question in his life away when he had followed Ultimecia out of the broadcasting tower and into oblivion.

"It's over." He repeated, the old, familiar shadows of his madness rising up in his gut, balling in his fists. He wanted nothing more than a bottle of gin and Hyperion's sharp edge…end the old Almasy legacy in style. Perform a proper end, one that would scar and splatter the walls, unlike the gimp, fumbling end his father had ended up with. A failure even in suicide, his father. Well, he would do one thing right, wouldn't he? The last thing in his fucking life…he'd do it well.

The anger was so familiar, warm, like a second heartbeat under his skin. The bubbling bitterness crept up his arm, throbbing an unsteady beat in his ear.

Very soon now.

He blinked. Had he said that out loud? 

No…but….

He sank back down on the mattress, burying his head in his hands.

"Will Quistis Trepe please report to the docking bay, immediately. I repeat, will Quistis Trepe please report to the docking bay **now**." Leonhart's voice, sounding like he had run a marathon. Seifer jerked his head up at the sound.

**Yes. Very soon now.**

…

….

…

She walked quickly down the corridor, the eyes of the students on her.

Squall, back a day early from the conference.

Her pace picked up.

Squall, his voice tight with worry over the com, almost desperate.

She was jogging now.

**Something is wrong.**

She was running, fear sitting like a lead weight in her stomach. She pressed her palm against the hangar bay entryway, muscles taut as it opened, preparing herself for anything.

Nothing could have prepared her.

Xu stood in the middle of the hanger, her backed turned, the Ragnarok looming behind her. Far up on the ship's hangar, Squall was struggling with something.

"Xu, what-"

Her friend turned, covered in blood.

Quistis' own ran cold. "Xu, what's happened?"

Xu seemed to have difficulty finding her voice, her expression torn between a grave fixation and a hysterical waver.

"It's Cid, Quistis." Whispered her friend.

"Cid's been shot."


	28. All the King's Horses

Be warned: I think in this particular chapter the story definitely earns its 'R' rating.

Disclaimer: I don't own Squaresoft. If I did, I'd live in a castle made out of chocolate and devote the rest of my life to perfecting the art of laziness.

Words

playing me deja-vu

like a radio tune I swear I've heard before  
Chills…is it something real

or the magic I'm feeding off your fingers  
Can't ever keep from falling apart

at the seams  
Can't I believe you're taking my heart

to pieces  
Lost, in a snow filled sky

we'll make it alright

to come undone now  
We'll try

to stay blind

to the hope and fear outside  
Hey child stay wilder

than the wind and blow me in to cry

Who do you need?

Who do you love?

When you come undone…..

-Duran Duran, _Come Undone_, the recommended listening for the end of this chapter

Chapter 25

Zell squinted through the rain, watching the path behind them for any possibility of an ambush. So far, he'd found only trees and an occasional drenched squirrel. Wherever the hell this place was, it certainly was miles away from anything else. The farther in they got, the more nervous Irvine seemed to become, and the more annoying Gzarth seemed to get.

Zell, however, was more irritated than anything. Drenched, tired, and still hungry, he had the nagging suspicion that this little man was leading them on a wild goose chase that had not only wasted most of an afternoon, but was bound to waste more. If there was one thing Zell prided himself on, it was his intuition.

Gzarth's teeth were chattering as the young man glanced nervously behind them, and Zell felt more certain than ever that Gzarth was bound to bust one of those smoke capsules, and then they'd all be as fucked as a grat in a grendel cage.

"Here we are." The dwarf stopped suddenly, and the group had to peer through a pair of iron gates to see a large, ivy-covered mansion in the distance.

"This is it?" muttered Zell, as the iron gates slowly crept open to reveal a cobblestone path, littered with withered flowers and brown grass. The place was downright eerie.

"You say 'it' as if you had not just stumbled upon your own enlightenment, boy." The little creature turned around to regard Zell with an icy stare, and it was then that he noticed the man's features completely. Beady little eyes that peered out like black marbles from the gooey flesh of his face were complimented by a sardonic snaggletooth grin. Spiked eyebrows twisted curiously over his eyes, knitting to reveal the small man's displeasure. Zell resisted the urge to shudder with revulsion and did so, barely.

The man spit over his shoulder. "Now come with me, and be silent about it."

The three young men exchanged wary glances, and Zell curled his toe around one of the three marble-like smoke capsules in his right boot, preparing to hold his breath and stomp at the slightest sign of danger.

An impressive set of iron doors loomed up at them, complete with carved lions with thick rings looped between their iron jaws. The little man jumped up, and quickly banged both of them before dropping back down.

A pause, then a booming crash of metal from within. The massive doors had apparently been unlocked.

"Do you seek the knowledge and the spiritual abandon of the Chosen?" asked the small man, solemnly.

"Sure, whatever." Replied Zell, hopping from foot to foot. He'd do just about anything to get out of this blasted rain.

"Then I suggest you keep your tongues between your teeth and your skull split open to the wonders behind this door. We don't let just anyone in, you know," he hissed, then with a strength that belied his size, hefted open one of the heavy doors and walked inside, out of the rain.

Zell squinted his eyes against the piercing light of the chandelier that invaded his line of sight. A long, luxurious carpet was spread out across the foyer, and several marble statues stood in a glossy gray stone fountain, water streaming through their fingers over various…. organs. Mansions with pornographic fountains? What kind of _enlightenment_ was this guy talking about?

The little man hurried off into an adjoining room, then ushered the three in.

"Now," said the little man, pointing at them in an irritating method. "Disrobe, and rejoin me in the foyer."

"Dis-wha?" repeated Zell, a cold suspicion pooling in his belly that he'd heard the man right.

"Disrobe." Replied the man, giving Zell a malicious look. "_Remove_ your clothing."

Irvine frowned, his stance rapidly becoming defensive. "Hey, you didn't say anything 'bout-"

"**_Do_ **you or **_do_** you **not **wish to receive the great Enlightenment?"

Irvine, Zell, and Gzarth exchanged a long, wary glance. Irvine had the premonition that the great Enlightenment would probably be the butt of a rifle pointed in his face as he exited the room.

"Make your decision." The little man turned on his heel. "And rejoin me in the foyer when you are done."

As soon as the doors shut behind him, the three young men began whispering at once.

"There's _no_ way-"

"The hell is-"

"Guys, listen," interrupted Irvine, holding up his hands. "Whatever the hell this is, we wanna get it done an' over with and get home, don't we?"

"Yeah, man, but what happens if it's an ambush?" hissed Zell. "Where the hell you suggest we hide our weapons?"

Irvine gave him a pointed look.

Zell held up his hands. "No way, man. That's an exit, not-"

Irvine rolled his eyes. "Not **that**, idget." He whispered back. "We're gonna tuck our grenades 'neath our tongues. If nothin' else, we can make a real hasty retreat."

Zell rolled his eyes. "This is a dumb idea, and you know it."

"You got a better one?" snapped Irvine. "We have no idea what kinda firepower is gonna be waitin' for us when we exit that room. I'm not goin' out there defenseless. It's better to follow his instructions, for now. We've been in worse situations, Zell."

"Um…guys?"

Zell was glaring at Irvine. "Well it sure doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this's a bad idea!"

"_Guys_-"

"An' it sure don't take a genius to figure out it's the only one we got, Zell!" replied Irvine, hotly.

"**GUYS**."

Irvine and Zell turned in sync. "NOT NOW, GZARTH!" The anger drained from their faces, however, as they looked behind Gzarth and into the red, beady eyes of a Sensbot.

Irvine reached for his gun instantly, and Zell was balling his fists, when the Sensbot blinked. It was an upgraded model, evidently, having long, protruding spikes for appendages and two ruby pieces of glass for what apparently were supposed to constitute 'eyes'. The machine extended its metal appendage, and the three men watched it warily.

"_May I take your clothing please._" It blipped, hovering almost expectantly.

Irvine exchanged a look with his comrades. "What?"

"_Sens1058D. Clothing please."_

"Scan it," hissed Zell out of the corner of his mouth.

Irvine ran a quick scan, then relaxed. The thing was apparently some sort of maid bot, which seemed unequipped as far as magic went. "Uh, no, thanks."

Gzarth was still starting at the Sensbot. "No way am I giving a robot my clothes."

"Well, I'm not undressing in front of one, either," replied Zell, never taking his eyes off the robot as he clutched his shirt to his chest. "Make it go away!"

"How the hell am I gonna make it go away?" snapped Irvine. "Sens1058D, leave?"

"_As you wish_." The metallic voice droned, bored, and turning, left the three baffled young men in silence.

Zell was pacing. "Yeah, oh yeah, this is just great. Some creepy little midget-"

"Little _person_." Interjected Gzarth.

"What?" Zell snapped, turning around.

"They prefer to be called, 'little people'. Don't you remember that from _SeeD Etiquette_?"

Zell started towards Gzarth, looking murderous, but Irvine held him back. "Well, some creepy little person," seethed Zell, wriggling out of Irvine's grip. "-takes us into the backwoods into this haunted mansion shack, and now we're supposed to take off all our clothes and 'join heem in the foyah'…boy, this sounds like a run-a-the-mill operation, doesn't it? Not creepy at all, really! I know on my last trip to Esthar, _I_ was forced to strip naked and run through the street-"

"Aw come off it, Zell," muttered Irvine, pulling his shirt over his head. "Let's just get this damned thing over with." He lowered his voice to a dull whisper. "Zell'n I're gonna put the concussion grenades an' the smoke bombs under our tongues, Gzarth, an' it frightens me t'say this, but yore gonna hafta do mosta th' talkin'. Somethin' goes wrong, we're gonna let 'er rip." He paused for a moment, working on the buckle of his pants, looking up. "None of this will speak of this. Ever." He said quickly, then turned back to his work.

Zell glared over at Gzarth as he peeled off his shirt.

The three stared at a separate piece of wall as they all disrobed, Zell and Irvine tucking a concussion grenade and a smoke capsule each under their tongues. The weapons were designed in miniature for easy storage, which allowed them to be hidden almost anywhere. The sensation was cool, slippery…they had practiced these kinds of dangerous maneuvers before in classes, walking around with plastic capsules with coloring agents under their tongues for practice, but this was far from a capsule with food coloring. One hard clink against a molar, and there wouldn't be a mouth, or a skull, to think of.

The three stared straight ahead, careful to respect what dignity the other had left. Which, considering, wasn't one hell of a lot.

Irvine cleared his throat. "Eth gow."

…

…

…

Quistis raced up the corridor, grabbing Xu's arms. The blood on her friend's shirt was cold, wet…not hers. Thank Hyne. Xu sagged in her arms- her friend's eyes were bloodshot, exhausted, and riddled with grief. "Squall…Rinoa…" muttered Xu, leaning heavily on her. Quistis stood straight. "Go and see Dr. Kadowaki, Xu. I'll help Squall."

Instead of starting an argument, Xu nodded quietly, slipping from her arms and walking, hunched, towards the MedBay. Quistis frowned and hurried towards the Ragnarok, meeting a grim looking Squall at the entrance, Cid's heavy form hanging limply in his arms. A crimson bandage had been draped around the Headmaster's head, and was dripping blood onto the linoleum in small, dark splatters.

For the first time, and for all her experience with field medicine, Quistis felt sick to her stomach.

Their eyes met, their arguments momentarily forgotten. "Squall, what-"

"No time. Get Rinoa," replied Squall, curtly, jogging past her. There was blood smeared on his cheek, and she could smell sweat on him…and fear. Her nose had been trained to it, her body conditioned not to create it. And yet, it was there on Squall…

…for Cid. Cid's arms were swaying limply at his sides, blood dribbling onto the floor as Squall carried him easily through the doorway. Hysteria rose in Quistis, swift and hot, but she choked it back, hurrying up Ragnarok's gate and into the dark ship.

Time for worry later…time for action now.

"Rinoa?"

A huddled figure shrunk against the side of the Ragnarok, rocking back and forth, hair obscuring most of the face.

Muttering echoed through the main cabin.

"Rinoa." Said Quistis, gently, inching forward. All was not right with the young sorceress.

No answer.

Quistis knelt down in front of the young sorceress and noticed, then, that her fingers, clutched tightly around her knees, were stained with dried blood.

What the hell had happened? No time for answers now. Get Rinoa, then head back to the MedBay. Cid…

"Rinoa."

Rinoa was mumbling louder now, and Quistis leaned closer to hear her.

"Getoutgetoutgetoutgetout…."

"Rinoa," she said, again, more insistently.

"Getoutgetoutgetout…."

"Rinoa, it's Quistis…" She said soothingly, laying her hand on Rinoa's pale arm.

"**GET OUT**!" Rinoa's head snapped up immediately at the contact, dark circles under her almost mad eyes. Quistis shrank back, thudding against the opposite side of the plane in surprise. That look in her eyes…it was…

Crazy. The copper sheen in her eyes…swirling…mad…

**Ultimecia**.

For a moment, the name flickered across her mind.

Impossible. Quistis blinked the thought away.

"Quisty." The young sorceress' eyes suddenly lit with recognition. Rinoa's eyes were wide now, shining. "Don't let it get me, Quisty. Don't let it get me…." Tears were coursing down her cheeks and long, angry red scratches trailed down her face, speckled with blood.

"Rinoa…who did this to you?"

"I did, I think," whispered the young sorceress, brokenly.

"Why?"

"Because," she whispered. "It's…in me…and I want it out…"

"What?"

"It…."Rinoa burst into tears again, holding up her fingers, covered in dried blood and her finger tips badly charred. Blisters formed on the in oblong, swelling shapes, blue clouds spreading like starfish across her palms. Mag burns. "See? I tried to help him…I tried…but it was too late…and it got in……" Her eyes narrowed, suddenly. "And it won't leave…"

Rinoa broke down again, her nails digging into her face, blood seeping up to meet the unrelenting pressure of her nails. "**Get out! Get out**!"

Quistis grabbed her hands, and tried to pry them away from her face, but Rinoa lashed out, catching Quistis across the crest bone above her eye and jerking her head back into the side of the plane. The missionary in her certainly hadn't expected the move from her friend, and it was out of shock that she pinned Rinoa back against the side of the plane, her skull still stinging.

"Rinoa! Stop it! What's the matter with you!"

The girl had gone limp in her arms, eyes wide. "Q-Q-Quisty…I'm so sorry…I tried to…save him…but…it was too late…"

Quistis, baffled, could only nod. "I know, Rinoa. Let's get you cleaned up."

"Can you keep a secret, Quisty?"

Quistis sat on the edge. "What is it?"

"I'm scared….I'm so scared…all the time…" she whispered, and with that, her head lolled forward, the young sorceress slumping forward into her arms.

Maternal instinct flowed through her then, fresh and foreign. In that moment, she felt no resentment or jealousy for the young woman as she held her up by the shoulder, and all but carried her towards the medbay. The students were stilled in the halls, horrified, and Quistis saw the small trail of blood ahead of her. They'd already seen Cid…

"I can't…" Rinoa lagged suddenly, her weight lurching on Quistis' already sore arm. Quistis bit her lip to keep from crying out as she tried to level the weight in her arms, grabbing Rinoa under her already slumped knees and hefting her up.

Rinoa was significantly shorter, but exhaustion was already weighing heavily on Quistis, and she struggled with Rinoa's dead weight down the hall.

Rinoa's eyes rolled in and out of focus, her lips bubbling with a thick white froth and her body jerking stiffly in what appeared to be some sort of mild seizure. Quistis gripped her tightly to her chest, ignoring the fact that Rinoa's fingernails were buried in her arms and that blood was beginning to swell to the surface.

It would be the end of Quistis' silent, inner feud with the beautiful sorceress, and the beginning of a friendship formed in a common solitude. Quistis knew isolation well, and Rinoa's heart, though the anti-thesis of her own, would be in part forever distant from those she loved. It was not in their unity, but in their common isolation, that Quistis would eventually come to think of Rinoa as a sister.

…

…

"Blood pressure is low," announced Dr. Kadowaki quietly, releasing the cuff and setting it down. "Absence of deep tendon reflex, decorticate posturing…" The doctor turned away from Cid's beside with tears in her eyes.

"What's it mean?" asked Selphie, eyes brimming with tears.

Quistis bowed her head, running a heavy hand through her hair. She already knew what it meant.

"Acute brain damage." Replied Dr. Kadowaki. "He's in a coma."

"What next?" asked Selphie.

"Subsequent organ system failure, probably…" muttered the doctor.

"What does _that_ mean?" followed Selphie, her voice containing a nearly hysterical edge.

Quistis looked away.

Dr. Kadowaki turned away from the cot, quickly attending to the IV bag that hung nearby, but the shake in her voice was audible. "That the light upstairs is already extinguished, and that soon, the rest of him will shut off by and by."

"Will he wake up?" asked Squall, urgency sharp in his voice.

Dr. Kadowaki turned sharply at the question. "I can't answer that. You should have known better than to bring him here. I don't have adequate facilities to care for someone in his condition."

"We couldn't leave him in Esthar," replied Squall, tonelessly. "We don't know who to trust and Esthar is in a panic. His safety could not be guaranteed there. We had him stabilized, and then-"

"-you applied a crude suture, then bound it with gauze and administered a crude blood transfusion? Whose?"

"Xu is type O negative," returned Squall. "We had no choice. There was commotion everywhere…he wasn't safe in Esthar!" For the first time in years, Quistis heard Squall's voice rise to a near shout.

Quistis closed her eyes, squeezing herself tightly. They couldn't afford to fall apart…. not now. "We have to proceed from now," she said, quietly, "We can't turn on each other."

Silence descended on the group, but it was brittle.

Dr. Kadowaki turned. "You did what you thought was best, Squall."

Squall nodded. "And you'll do the best you can, doctor." He met Quistis' eyes briefly, but his eyes were no warmer. "I'm going to talk to Serabin." He said, curtly, before turning and walking from the room. Selphie hovered in the room, wringing her hands.

"Contact Zell and Irvine, Selphie." Said Quistis, calmly. "Call them immediately, but only reveal the details if you can get a direct connection." Selphie nodded, and with tearful eyes, hurried out.

Quistis shared a long, silent look with Dr. Kadowaki. "No good can come of this, Quistis." Said the older woman, tears now running freely down her old, plump cheeks. Hurriedly, the old woman wiped her sleeve across her face, trying to press her aging features into their normal, stern composure.

"Has Edea been contacted?" asked Quistis, quietly.

The doctor nodded.

"It will be all right, Dr. Kadowaki." It was what Cid would have said…what needed to be said, but the words felt hollow and tasted bitter to her.

Dr. Kadowaki glanced at the young woman out of the corner of her eye- slightly heartened, but not surprised at the girl's words. Squall had always been the leader of the collection of heroes, but he had never been the glue that had held them together. That adhesive was Quistis, whether she realized it or not. Calm, diplomatic Quistis. Her burden would soon become as heavy as Squall's.

The doctor looked away before continuing. "I've given Xu a strong sedative. She's not going to be very coherent." She said, gesturing towards the adjacent room. "The poor girl was shaking so badly…she should be asleep soon." Quistis nodded, walking into the room. Xu was on her side, her arm slung over her face.

"Hey, Xu." Said Quistis, quietly. "It's Quistis."

"Feel like death warmed over," replied her friend, rolling onto her back and staring up at the ceiling, her normally crisp and professional voice slurred into a tired stumble of words.

"I heard you donated some blood to Cid." Said her friend, warmly, touching her shoulder.

"'Bout a damned gallon," muttered her friend. "Might as well've spit in the tubing fer an' hour, fer all the good it did." She paused. "…'s Rinoa'll right?"

"She's sleeping in the next room," replied Quistis. It wasn't a lie. She didn't mention the fact that Rinoa was nearly comatose, hooked up to several machine and not making any sense.

"What happened, Xu?"

Her friend sighed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. "We 're taking a…break from th' meeting. All 'f a sudden there was a shot…an' everyone turned 'round…we all turned 'round…an' Cid was falling…there was blood everywhere. Rinoa tried to heal him righ' away, touched him, but she jes…she touched him, an' she went nuts. She just started…screaming and the spells stalled in her hands…burnt pretty badly. Squall…never seen 'um so lost…'tween Rinoa an' Cid…"

Xu's eyes darkened. "Oh, Hyne, Quis…He 'us jes' talkin' a me…he was telling me it would turn out all right…he was smiling…he had his hand on my shoulder and then…and then…he was fallin', I caught him…there was blood everywhere…and screaming…he 'uz like a dad t' me…an he's gonna die now…" Xu looked down at the blood on her shirt, and for the first time since Quistis had known her, tears rolled down her cheeks. "I dun wan' 'is blood on me…" Quistis, as unfamiliar with comforting as being comforted, gingerly put her hands around her friend, patting her back in a clumsy, but maternal fashion.

"It'll be all right, Xu." She said, because her friend needed to hear it, just as Kadowaki did. They all would, in the days ahead.

"No…no…t's all gone to shit, 'istis." Said Xu, sobbing into her hands for the first time in a day and a half. "…'s all…going…"

"We'll find who's responsible." Said Quistis, her voice gaining an iron edge that Xu knew well.

Her friend only nodded, before turning back onto her side, her eyes beginning to flicker back up into her skull. "'s all falling…Quis…all…falling…." Her voice tapered off into a heavy, long breath.

Xu was asleep.

Quistis walked into the next room, and after acquiring some clothing from Kadowaki, the two women cut Xu's bloody clothes from her form and wormed her lifeless limbs into a hospital gown.

Xu had fallen deep asleep, her face ashen, and tears still stuck to her cheeks. Quistis wiped them away with her sleeve. Poor Xu…. she had never seen her friend's proud countenance so shattered.

"I'm going to the lab to run a bio-analysis on these tissue samples from Cid." Said Dr. Kadowaki. "There's poison swimming in his eyes. Stay with him until I get back, Quistis. I'm going to need your help for the x-rays."

Quistis could only nod, as she sank down into a small folding chair beside Cid's cot. Silence descended, and Quistis felt its vulnerability keenly. Reaching out, she took one of Cid's hands in her own. It was cold to the touch.

_On the beach, sunlight on the water and the spray salty on her lips.__ The sand burned and tickled beneath her toes, and even the sand crabs seemed to be hopping. She swung his hand in hers and skipped along, pointing out with glee a tide pool filled with pink starfish and small snapping crabs. He hunched over, pushing his glasses up his ample nose and listening with amused attention as she named each of the starfish._

_….Hand warm in hers, eyes twinkling as they met hers. "Congratulations, Quistis. Welcome to SeeD."_

Quistis blinked, as if coming awake, the tail of her memory still bright and stinging in her mind. She looked distantly out at the snow, Cid's cold hand sandwiched between both of hers, and couldn't help but feel as if a tremendous burden had been placed upon her shoulders.

She would bear it. She had to.

…

…

…

Selphie sat in the shadows of the control room, a headset resting on her auburn locks as she operated the blinking lights of the switchboard. She hadn't bothered to turn the main lights on, and the lights of the switchboard danced across her face like the memory of a lit tree. She was curled up in the large operator's chair, her feet tucked beneath her as she repeatedly flicked the yellow light on the edge. She wiped her sleeve under her nose, sniffling as she cleared her throat.

"Base B to Redd13, do you copy….BaseB to Redd13, do you copy…I repeat….Base B to Redd13, over."

She held her forehead, leaning over the controls. "Come on you two…_answer_…" she whispered.

The responding static left an empty echo in her chest.

…

…

…

"Well that's the last damned time I listen to you! Enlightenment my ass!" hissed Zell, walking through the streets of Dollet with a pine branch tucked between his legs, ignoring the catcalls of an group of young women with laundry baskets balanced on their hips.

The two SeeDs were extremely cranky…and extremely cold.

After all, they'd just found out that Xyionn, their most promising lead in the IGCS case, was little more than a glorified rich-boy's nudist colony.

_They'd arrived in the adjacent room to find it empty, standing somewhat self-consciously in the foyer, where the water fountain seemed to tinkle almost ominously. __Irving__ resisted the strong urge to swallow. All three had their arms folded in front of them._

_"Ith iths ga bwa ieoo."__ Muttered Zell._

_"Thut uht!"__ Snarled __Irvine__._

_"Ah…excellent choice."__ The little man had waddled in the room, and __Irvine__ positioned the capsule between his molars on reflex as he turned. The three young men blinked in surprise. _

_The man was as naked as they were._

_This was…unexpected. The three had been expecting an ambush. To see their enemy as compromised as they were was puzzling, to say the least._

_"Now, please, gentlemen, join me in the ballroom, won't you?"_

_"Uh, yeah, sure," said Gzarth._

_Zell made a face at his back as the little man turned, although it might have been the aftertaste of the concussion grenade under his tongue. The thing was roughly the size of a child's clenched first, and __Irvine__ imagined it was quite a mouthful, even for someone with a mouth as large as Zell's._

_The mansion was truly decadent. Marble gargoyles, full, effect suits of armor, and coats of arms decorated the halls, and long, thick Persian carpets were thick and soft under their feet._

_"Who does this place belong to?" asked Gzarth, gazing warily at the men in suits of armor as if they were likely to come alive at any second._

_The man did not turn. "It belongs to no man. It belongs to our cause."_

_Gzarth frowned. "Who're _**you**_?"_

_"Who I am means absolutely nothing. I am but a servant."_

_Gzarth exchanged a brief look with __Irvine__, as if to say, **well**, **what now**?_

_The man turned to them, hands pressed together as if in prayer. "In the service of Hyne and the Great Enlightenment, brothers, I welcome you to our chapel, a great holy orifice of enlightenment and intellectual ecstasy. "_

_Irvine__ felt as if he had just had intercourse with the man's dialogue._

_"Brothers, I bid you welcome to the Room of Illumination."_

_Nothing would have prepared the trio for what lay beyond those doors. As it was, Zell nearly choked on the concussion grenades._

_It was as if they had taken Girls Gone Whoring 3 and mixed it with an episode of The Rich, the Decadent, and the Obscene._

_Gzarth's__ jaw was hanging open, and Zell's and Irvine's would have been as well, were it not for their mouth's volatile cargo._

_Obscene fountains decorated the room, which was a sea of old oil paintings and Persian rugs. Large amounts of food lay scattered on silver platters around the room, and Sensbots threaded through the room, humming, armed with silk towels and trays filled with mountainous platters of rich food. And people, wearing nothing but their skins, were draped across the lush furniture and carpets. Beautiful young women, older women that should not have been naked under any circumstances, and men whose faces Zell and Irvine recognized as prominent members in government- Dollet's president, several members of Esthar's cabinet, Drake Winsberg, Tromedia's mayor, and, Zell suppressed a sneer, none other than Darwin Drosskow, who reclined in one of the plush red velvet chairs with a snifter of brandy and a lazy smile spread across his face. _

_So this was what the large Sensbot orders had been for, and the large revenue statement…hookers and brandy. Another damned dead end._

_Drosskow would recognize them. __Irvine__ narrowed his eyes. He had encountered __Darwin__ Drosskow at an occasional military ops briefing. And, after all, Drosskow was the one that had installed their primary message boards and wireless web accessibility._

_._

_Things had just become…complicated. And interesting. Time to find out more about Drosskow's system…and his interests._

_The room had fallen silent at their entrance, but it was the small man that spoke up first._

_"I found these men searching for our enlightenment, brothers."_

_Darwin seemed to wake up, getting leisurely to his feet and walking up to Zell. Grinning, he spat in his face, taking his hand and wiping away the concealer to reveal Zell's trademark tattoo. Zell startled, but remained still, glaring at Drosskow with concentrated hatred in his eyes._

_"Ah, as I thought, we have SeeD in our mist. What an unexpected honor."_

_The small man bowed. "I'm sorry, my lord. If I'd known..."_

_Drosskow waved at him. "No matter, Wilkins. This little distraction shall prove interesting. Welcome, gentlemen. Irvine Kinneas, the old war hero, am I right? And Nell, was it?"_

_Zell replied with a sneer. Drosskow, didn't seem to notice, however, and was not looking at Gzarth._

_"And you are?"_

_"Gzarth."_

_"Well, I didn't know the military had so many in search of enlightenment. I imagined you all as more of the complacent mongrel-types, I must admit. No matter. What brings you gentlemen here? Because, surely, it is not the progressive pleasures that we enjoy."_

_"And what are those?" Gzarth was on a roll._

_Drosskow pressed his fingers together and pursed his lips in a presumptuously bored manner. "The Enlightenment is intended for those of superior intellect and taste, to provide a pure medium in which only natural embodiments are used to conduct thought and pleasure."_

_"But…you use robots. That's not natural," replied Gzarth._

_Drosskow looked annoyed. "Clearly, you're missing the point." He replied, boredly._

_But for once, __Irvine__ didn't think Gzarth had missed the point at all._

_"Again, what brings you here? Your presence is draining the ambiance from the room."_

_Gzarth was clearly at a loss for words, and Zell and __Irvine__ were stuck in a forced silence. __Irvine__ again wondered at the brilliance of freeing the mouth in the group that had the least to say._

_But Gzarth surprised him. "We're searching for the Enlightenment, of course. What else would we be here for?"_

_Darwin__ took a sip of his brandy. "Why do I have a difficult time believing you?" A clicking sound was heard, and __Irvine__ glanced up to see that the midget…little person was now cocking back the barrel of an impressive pistol, complete with silencer._

_So much for the Enlightenment._

_Zell exchanged a look with __Irvine__, and promptly coughed hard into his hand. __Irvine__ saw his friend's fist ball- Zell quickly wound it behind his back one again. __Irvine__ admired the under-handedness, but didn't dare cough himself. It would seem a little suspicious. These men were fools, but they weren't unwary. _

_"You seem to have an awful lot of time on your hands, Drosskow, for someone whose technology just cracked." Said Zell, narrowing his eyes at the room in front of them._

_Darwin__ sneered. "Hardly. I believe that was the work of a band of incompetent SeeDs, apparently as well _**endowed**_ as the rest of your military operation. I can't be held responsible for the incompetents who were allowed to manhandle simple defense codes-"_

_Zell sneered. "I thought your system was self-sustaining?" __Irvine__ suppressed a grin. Zell had clearly been listening to Arya's technical daydreams more than he let on._

_Darwin__'s handsome gaze darkened. "I don't have to justify myself to a couple of low-ranking soldiers whose understanding of mechanical progress is confined to the trigger--"_

_"No, but I'd imagine that the Garden Board is gonna take a closer look at you and your operations," replied Zell hotly. "And I'll bet you've been trading your defense systems to more than just legitimate military ops."_

_Darwin__ was angry now. He dropped his brandy snifter, which shattered on the marble floor. "It seems to me," sneered Drosskow, a dark, heady look in his eyes, "That you have more important things to worry about than computer systems."_

_"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Gzarth, warily._

_Darwin__ was smiling now, and glanced subversively over at Drake Winsberg. "They don't know yet. Balamb is more crippled than we thought."_

_"Watch it-" Zell started forward but several more clicks sounded throughout the room. _

_"No. I think it is you that should watch yourselves." Said Drosskow, calmly. "Siron, take care of them, please."_

_"What about your peaceful enlightenment?"_

_Winsberg shook his head. "I doubt many constituents would understand the intellectual appetites of their superiors. I'm afraid we can't allow this little club to become any less…exclusive."_

_"Yes, it'd be a real shame if the Tromedian residents knew where their tax dollars were going," replied Gzarth ruefully._

_Winsberg was smiling with his teeth. "Don't take this personally, gentlemen, but I'm sure that with all the flurry your little Garden's going to be in, you won't be missed for some time."_

_Flurry?__ What was he talking about?_

_Drosskow lifted a new brandy goblet in a mocking toast. "Yes, don't take it personally. Ishor, take them out in the foyer. I don't want blood all over the carpet."_

_Zell exchanged a look with __Irvine__ and Gzarth. _

**Now.**

_"Well, it's been entertaining, gentlemen-"began Zell._

_Irvine spit the smoke bombs into his hand, he relished the surprised look on Winsberg's fat face as he held them out in his palm. "…But we've really gotta run!"_

_Everything happened at once. __Irvine__ smashed the smoke bombs into the ground just as the servants opened fire. A vase shattered next to __Irvine__'s ear as they turned and ran towards the exit. _

_"Cover your nuts, gentlemen!" shouted Zell, and Irvine felt the heat of the concussion grenade's explosion singe his behind as he, Zell, and Gzarth scrambled out into the foyer._

_"Our clothes!" shouted Gzarth._

_"No time!" replied __Irvine__ as the three SeeDs burst through the smoky room, and into the biting cold air-_

Irvine had been on many oddball missions before, but he could honestly say this was his first going completely commando.

Zell grit his teeth as he glanced behind him. "Yeah, this is just great, Irvine! Our cover's blown, we got nothin' on Drosskow, and he's got destruction of property on us-"

"Shut yer mouth, Zell!" returned Irvine, holding a clump of spruce in front of his thighs, waving at a cluster of tsking old ladies as the two jogged briskly through the streets. Two young women were giggling in front of a shop, but Zell shot them a hostile glare. "It's COLD out!" he shouted.

"Yeah, great idea…" muttered Zell, shivering beneath his scant, leafy attire. "Now we both stink to high freakin' Hyne of smoke grenades, we're no freakin' closer to getting to the bottom of the IGCS fiasco, there's a nude lynching mob after us, and I'm freezin' my ass off-"

"Zell, you don't quit yer bitchin', I'm gonna put my fist through yer teeth-"

But Zell had stopped, suddenly. He turned, a look of irritation and horror crossing his face. "Aw, shit man, where the hell is Gzarth?"

Irvine turned.

Just then Gzarth crashed through the bushes, a child's sand bucket over his privates and a terrified look on his face, which was covered in welts from unfriendly tree branches. "That midget's fast!" he swore, glancing behind him. "And he's got a hyne-damned oozie!"

"It's little _person_," replied Zell dryly, glaring behind him as Gzarth caught up, ducking into a dark alley.

"Let's hurry back," said Irvine, shivering. "I've got a bad feeling."

Zell rolled his eyes. "This mission is one bad feeling."

…

…

…

The air smelled like winter. He had no real concept of winter, only that it was cold and entailed a great deal of white powder and slippery water that was fun to play with but no good to drink. 'Winter' was a seasonal concept, and he knew only the stark progression of time. Today, snow. Tomorrow, who knew? It didn't matter.

Only the woman mattered. The Woman had saved him from the men with the Very Bad Things that stung him, and the woman was to be followed and protected. The woman was food, and petting, and HOME…nothing else mattered but HOME.

He craned his head up to look at what the woman was doing. She was sitting with a pile of things in her lap, frowning. She smelled tense, and so he remained awake, searching the perimeter for possible threats. So far, he had encountered only drifting snowflakes and a few nervous students. He disliked the scent of fear. He himself had no real concept of it in terms of emotion, but the primal parts of his brain were trained to react unfavorably to it. Fear meant weakness. Weakness was exploited.

The woman was strong. Every so often, she would lean down and pat him between the ears, scratching the Good Spot, or fish a packet of oyster crackers out of her pocket and feed him from her hands. She smelt nothing like the old man that had existed before her, but she was food. Food was HOME.

The woman was master now, and, as such, the woman was to be protected. He did not think of the woman by name. Names were a human invention. His own name meant very little to him, aside from the fact that it was spoken or shouted to him quite often. The woman, in simple terms, was MINE, a name that registered affection and possession.

He laid out on the cold floor at her feet, staring up at the sky with no sense of hurry or impatience. The snow landed on his nose- he sniffed at it curiously but it melted too soon. There was no rush to be anywhere. To a dog, each moment is eternity. To a human, each moment was soon to be lost.

The woman felt the press of time significantly.

Quistis shifted on the bench, uncrossing her long legs and reluctantly getting to her feet. The cold had numbed her- it had taken the flush from her cheeks and the unsteady tremor of her hands, as she'd hoped it would. Focused now, and a thousand times more steady than she had been walking out of Cid's hospital room, she strode back towards the second story classroom, Cerberus in tow. She was exhausted…the burning in her arms was constant and intense, and thoughts of Cid's ashen face continued to swim before her eyes. She was, really, running on nothing short of desperation.

_Work to do. Steady, Quistis. _

She grabbed a cup of coffee from the cafeteria and two large bags of ice before settling herself in one of the rear desks, snapping on the monitor and waiting for the computer to warm up. In the meantime, she lay her each of her arms on the cold, plastic skin of the ice bags, closing her eyes at the momentary comfort.

Cerberus laid at her feet once more, sniffing a stray ice cube and growling at it when it slunk across the floor.

Welcome to B. Garden database. Please enter your username and password.

/access:0165414, SeeD Quistis Trepe/

Welcome, SeeD Quistis Trepe! You have five hundred and twenty three messages!

Quistis winced as she clicked on her Inbox. Damned Trepies.

After scanning down the list and finding a few breast enlargement advertisements (one of them from Irvine) and a notice congratulating her for winning a complimentary stay in a Trabia resort if she'd only CALL NOW, she noticed Dr. Odine's address. Quickly clicking on it, she was rewarded with the following message:

_Ms. Trepe,_

_I must admit I was surprised as to the nature of your question- poison counters placed on weapons are not a new phenomenon, and I am astonished that this has not occurred to you. The mag supply for poison counters the likes of which you speak of could be found in any or most supply stores- in high concentrations the poison would have virtually instantaneous effects if allowed direct access to the blood stream. I might add that due to a gross need of funding, the DS Research center makes many different phenomena its concern. No doubt the doctor has offered to run additional tests?_

_The nature of the IGCS incident seemed to be the work of a militant resistance group- in all actuality, coupling is not an exclusive phenomenon and hardly has the conspirator-like implications you seem to be suggesting. In the future, I suggest you do some basic research before consulting me with such basically perceptible matters, as my time as of late is quite valuable._

_-Odine_

Quistis recoiled from the screen as if it had stung her. That certainly wasn't the response she had been expecting. Odine had been helpful to them in the past- the man was eccentric, certainly, but never dismissive. She frowned. She _knew_ that Odine's current research concerned the biosynthesis of organic matter vs. high-energy magic…was he being so tight-lipped because the research was so highly classified?

Classification be damned, she thought as she walked over to the wall and picked up the phone. Odine would hand over his research, or she would file a military mandate for him to do so, and push it with every political favor that was owed her. Lives were at stake. There had to be something in that research that would give her some idea of the fiscal or the laboratory equipment necessary for such a feat.

"Damnit, there has to be something…" she muttered into the mouthpiece.

"Odine's lab," came the answer.

"Dr. Odine, please." She said, her tone not leaving any room for argument. "This is Quistis Trepe of Balamb Garden, access code 103-9BX-4HIR." Odine had given them the code, in case the SeeD team ever needed to reach him. Without it, the phone messages were filed into a haphazard ocean of yellow sticky notes, and he was nearly impossible to get ahold of.

A pause. "Dr. Odine isn't here. He's on vacation."

Quistis rolled her eyes. What a time to go on vacation. "When can I expect him back?"

"He didn't say."

"Wonderful. Tell him to get in contact with Quistis Trepe as soon as possible, please. He'll know who I am. Thank you."

Quistis angrily replaced the receiver, fuming. Wonderful. Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. She hit the inter-Garden button, then quickly dialed a familiar number.

Three rings followed., before com was activated. "Hello?"

"Arya?" asked Quistis. "I need a favor."

…

…

…

"Are the samples back yet, doctor?" asked Quistis, staring up at the bright screen of x-rays that was strung along the wall of the laboratory. A bright white skull grinned back at her, a slug encapsulated in the sea of pale, thin white silk of bone against the translucent paper.

"Not yet." Replied the doctor. "I don't have the same technology as the DS Research center…not by any means. The tests for poison were inconclusive…the swelling in the brain is down, for now. All we can do is wait. For now, all I can do is guess as to the nature of the damage done."

"I'll bet the poison is exactly the same type I extracted from Seifer." Replied Quistis, turning away from the sea of grinning skulls and gripping her arms to sooth the constant burning. Her hands were chilled from the cool air of the lab and her insides were chilled by the pictures.

"This makes no sense to me," said Dr. Kadowaki, her forehead resting in her hand as she draped her other free limb across her leg. "He should be dead."

"Well, if the slug in Cid's brain is anything like the other one, he shouldn't be. The poison found in the slug harvested from Seifer regenerates living tissue even as it destroys it. The tissue itself is necrotic, but maintains the properties of the poison, which _becomes_ the living tissue. The new tissue responds to basic stimulus only." Recited Quistis aloud, remembering her discussion with the DS Research Center.

"You're saying that Cid is already dead?" asked the doctor, incredulously.

Quistis shook her head. "No. The subjects that the D.S. Research center exposed to the poison exhibited basic reactions to basic sensory stimulus. Cid is comatose. He's breathing." Her brow furrowed. "He's fighting it."

Dr. Kadowaki shook her head. "Impossible. Optimistic, Quistis, but impossible. Cid is most likely completely brain-"

"No…I think the poison found the one part of the body that could resist it. The brain is more complex than muscle tissue. Dr. Willshire said that the poison spread quickly- that it jumped from one part of the body to the next. Seifer's body fought it- it contained it. When Willshire infected the lab rats, brain activity was the last function to cease. That's the only explanation I can think of. If the poison had him, Dr. Kadowaki, he wouldn't be breathing. His heart would have stopped."

Both women stared down at Cid's bedside, where the heart monitor remained active and Cid's chest rose and fell against all odds.

"He's holding on, doctor. There's still hope."

There had to be…somewhere.

…

…

…

"Well, I'd wager it's safe t' say that we won't be visiting Dollet on any undercover missions any time soon."

"Yeah," muttered Zell ruefully, tugging on a white t-shirt despite his shivering. "If they can't identify our faces, they can always identify our asses in a line up."

"Still," said Gzarth, trying to look optimistic as he fastened his gun to his hip. "We did rule out one possibility in the IGCS destruction, didn't we?" Still shivering, he buttoned up his trench coat, chuckling. "So, I guess it was a little enlightening after-"

"Shut up, Gzarth," replied Zell and Irvine in unison.

"An' by the way, Zell, next time don't get so throw-happy with that concussion grenade. Wait till we're at the door. Y' nearly burned my as-"

"Base B to Redd13, come in. Base B to Redd13, come in, please." Selphie's voice, carrying an uncharacteristically heavy edge to it.

"Where in the hell's the com?" asked Irvine, glancing around the room.

Irvine, Zell, and Gzarth all dove at once through the bedcovers- sheets, shoes, and duffle bags went flying before Zell came up with the small hand-held device. "This is Blue 11, come in BaseB."

"Blue11 acknowledged. Report back to Base immediately."

Irvine snatched the com from Zell's hands. "Why? What's happened?" he demanded, the knot in his chest tightening to a painful contortion at the grief inherent in Selphie's voice.

Forgetting com protocol, Selphie's voice crackled unsteadily. "It's Cid…"

…

…

…

Squall stood at the head of the room, hands folded behind his back. A sea of SeeDs regarded their leader with stoic sincerity, their lines uniform in main circle, faces expressionless. The most deadly army ever formed, eagerly awaiting instruction. The rest of the student body hung behind them

Squall looked up. "Serabin, report."

Serabin moved forward. "The Trabia team has returned- Trabia reports that it lost connection roughly the same time Balamb did, give or take a few hours. The team from Galbadia hasn't returned. We expect their return in one or two days- last radio contact was two days ago."

Squall nodded, pacing like a nervous cat. "Nothing we weren't expecting, at any rate. I called this meeting to make an announcement. Balamb made an agreement with the Estharian government some time ago to help rid them of a particularly nasty swell of monsters that we think is simply a natural population explosion as the result of quite a few mild winters."

He stopped his paces. "Garden intends to honor this contract. We depart for Esthar in six hours."

Surprise echoed through the room- a discontented whisper.

Squall ignored it. "Nida, you're in charge of departure."

Nida nodded.

"With all due respect, Commander," said Serabin, "The Garden Board is placing us under probationary suspension, isn't it?"

"The Garden Board is in the _process_ of putting us under probationary suspension, Serabin." Replied Squall. "When this group shot Cid, they sent us a message." He met the eyes of every soldier in the room, resolve cold and steady in his. "Tomorrow, we send _them_ a message. Balamb Garden is fully functional, with or without Cid, and we are prepared to operate in any capacity necessary."

"But the Garden Council-" began Serabin.

"Is in all probability no longer on our side," replied Squall.

The room digested the implications of that statement uneasily.

"Four mission teams will be sent out for the SeeD exam with SeeD escort. All concerned have already received mission briefings." Squall turned his back on them, hands still folded as he walked back towards Cid's office. "You are all dismissed. Be prepared for departure."

Quistis turned and walked slowly back towards the laboratory, immersed in the crowd and her own train of thought. They were not only aiding the Estharian government…they were directly opposing the Garden Board. Did Squall know what he was getting himself into?

"Looks like the bad blood is thinning, Trepe," came a voice behind her. "With Kramer down, it's only a matter of time before Seifer-"

She turned only slightly, eyes narrowed at the familiar voice. "Shut your mouth, Brek," she snarled.

"Touchy, touchy," he replied, chuckling. "Time is running out, isn't it?"

Something in Quistis snapped.

Garek never saw the punch coming. It cranked his skull back like a bobble-doll, splitting his lip and splattering his chin with blood. Quistis lowered her fist, knuckles stinging but fully prepared to break his nose. The students had thinned around them and a few glanced over their shoulder, wide-eyed.

Brek touched his hand to his lip in disbelief before curling his hand into a fist. "You little bitch-" But his eyes narrowed suddenly at something behind her, and he soon took a step back, snarling something under his breath as he stalked into the crowd.

Quistis frowned, and looked behind her, to see the familiar form of Seifer Almasy glaring after Brek's slinking form. His eyes met hers for a brief moment, containing something unreadable, before he turned and began walking again. "Leonhart's making a mistake," he said.

Quistis glanced at him. "You think he's wrong to take on the Garden Council, don't you?"

Seifer just shook his head. "He's trying so hard to send a message, he's not watching his ass. Whatever's happened- the culprits aren't in Esthar." He glanced at her. "Something's coming, and he'd better be prepared for it. Somebody that shoots a leader and knocks down a building isn't just looking for one battle- they want a war."

She remained quiet as they walked down the hall. "You're still planning on leaving, aren't you?."

Seifer's gaze was empty as he slanted a glance at her. "What's keeping me here?"

Quistis had no answer for that. The two walked in silence for a minute more, before their paths diverged. They parted silently, neither able to conjure up words that seemed particularly appropriate for the occasion.

Quistis glanced over her shoulder. "You'll wait till we dock in Esthar, won't you?" she called after him.

Seifer shrugged in reply, but Quistis thought she caught a nod somewhere between his shoulder blades.

…

…

…

The watchman, a boy no more than sixteen years old, leaned with his feet crossed against the small platform intended to keep out the icy winds, adjusting his mittens before once again picking up his gun. Watch hours were a necessary component of the SeeD training program, but really, most new cadets were certain it was meant to narrow the ranks by boring new students to death. He half-heartedly squinted in the near-dark of dusk, before retreating back to his thoughts. They were the only warm things he had on him.

Besides, nothing ever happened this time of night. In a few hours, he could go back inside when B. Garden took off.

B. Garden had regained some shape of silence as night again descended, the milky hues cast along the thin gates in patterned shadows, duel barriers of steel and shadow as a single solitary figure dressed in a darkly colored cloak made their way up the path.

The cloak dragged on the ground behind them, hood obscuring the detail of their face. The watchman, used to a consistent scenery of stationary trees and inactive shrubbery was startled out of his dreams of bravado and half-naked women to a rather disconcerting picture. The watchman straightened, his hold tightening on the basic-issue Valient as he called out into the darkness at the slim figure that seemed to glide along the path with silent stealth.

"Ho there! Identify yourself!"

The figure held up a hand, slowly, fingers outspread, and for a moment, the young soldier throught the shadow intended to fire on him. But the hand continued its upward motion, and slowly, pulled back the hood to reveal the tired face of Edea Kramer.

"Nothing to worry about," she said, soothingly. "Please allow me in."

The young man nodded, fumbling with the gate keys as Edea looked sadly up at the silent structure.

"Alea iacta est….."

Quistis tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, leaning over the counter. It was early evening, and exhaustion was rapidly beginning to set in. She refused to give in to it, however. This had to be done. They had to know. Too much had happened already.

_Think, Quistis. Think above the pain._

She'd tried for the past three hours for mag-couple a basic poison spell to a standard AX-318 slug that she'd borrowed from the storeroom. Despite the fact that she was only using tiny bursts of energy to conduct a very weak poison spell, her arms were still killing her. Each jump from her fingertip was like slicing open her arm in the magical equivalent of an acid-doused paper cut, and she was glad no one else in the room was there to hear her shouts of pain. Dr. Kadowaki would probably save her arms the trouble of killing her and do it herself if she knew Quistis was casting anything, but she needed to see for herself if the small bullet in front of her would hold any magic.

But the bullet _wouldn't_ hold it, not even for a moment. She had suspended the bullet in a beret clamp grip and placed a mirror behind it to view the effects from all angles. It was frustrating her beyond measure, and the pain in her arms didn't decrease her impatience.

Quistis recognized her superior ability as a caster- not out of conceit but because quite simply, it was true. Garden, too, recognized her as SeeD's top magic user, bested only by Rinoa, whose abilities were somewhat…hereditary. She had earned the distinction-Quistis had studied blue magic for years independently aside from the normal SeeD requirements, practically since her admittance to Garden. It was not a magic that came easily, and she was quite proud to have accomplished all known advanced levels.

She was an Alpha-level caster, and yet, she couldn't get the stupid slug to hold a magic counter for even the merest of seconds. Frustrated, she sat back on the stool, staring at the papers and the bullet in front of her.

It didn't make sense.

Poison magic by its nature was more of a biotic magic than an elemental magic. While swords and staffs and even Irvine's gun could hold powerful elemental magic, biotic magic was harder to junction to inanimate matter. In fact, it was nearly impossible...Quistis had never seen it done before, and even the texts that reported it gave it a holding time of a few seconds under ideal laboratory conditions.

Quistis rested her chin in her hand, gazing around the rooms at the suspended mag-bags and Bunsen burners, glass tubes in wood casings-

Mag-bags. Her brain churned.

The magic coupled with the saline solution. Chemicals. Biomass. She plucked the bullet from the stand, holding it up to the light.

The unidentified biomass on the bullet. That had to be what was holding the magic.

But what biomass? From where?

From _what_?

Quistis' excitement at the revelation was quickly lessened by the new problem. DNA C and D was unidentified. It had to be the unidentified DNA that was coupling with the poison to hold it in the metal.

They were making _living_ weapons.

But who had the chemical and the biological know-how to couple bullets, DNA, and advanced Poison bio-magic?

Quistis buried her head in her hands. This thing was like a puzzle with about a million pieces. Even the pieces seemed to have pieces. Her head was pounding. The frustrations and emotions from her long day were pooling into her veins and pounding into her head, making the pain in her arms beat double time.

She stood back, and winding her fingers in her hair, stared down at the bullet in her open palm. It was a simple slug…there was nothing at all special about it.

At least, nothing that was visible.

Quistis grimaced, and closed her eyes. Her hand was throbbing.

….throbbing under the weight of the bullet in her hand…

…Seifer on the ground, his body twisting in pain as she wedged the slippery bullet from his flesh, the metal hot between her fingers and the bright green of Seifer's eyes even more intense with pain and poison. She held the bullet up, Protect's green shields glancing off the slightly flattened silver pellet, and the bullet was beating in her hand like a heart….

**_MINE._**

She jumped awake, stumbling back in surprise as she dropped the bullet, the jump of her arm knocking into the counter and shaking the entire table.

The mirror, bullet, and papers went flying. The mirror clattered to the ground . Both the plastic and the mirror shattered, and she watched, dimly, shaking at the sound. She stopped, muscles held taught, form still like a rabbit wary of a fox's ambush.

Cerberus sat up and barked.

The mirror was broken.

She grabbed the back of her neck, and was instantly puzzled at her action. She felt dizzy.

_"Sew her back together again…"_

Tears jumped at her eyes, and befuddled, she reached up to wipe them away as she crouched down. She trembled as she stared down at the ruins of the mirror, the tears streaming persistently down her face, falling down on silver shards and brown plastic. She was crying for the first time in years.

_Stupid girl, it's only a broken mirror_, she thought to herself, wiping at her eyes. _Why are you crying?_

She reached down to collect the pieces.

The memory spiraled up, the force of it enough to knock her on her hands.

_Please, please, I'll go to my room- __  
Don't you DON'T me, faggot!_

The shouts resounded in her skull, dark and oh so familiar……

…the memories were coming back.

"Not now…_please_ not now…"

She took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing her eyes open. She looked down at her hands, now warm and sticky, fists clenched hard amidst the bright, glittering pain of the mirror shards buried in her skin. She opened her hands, shaking, gritting her teeth as the tiny, glittering shards blinked up at her.

"Pull yourself together." She hissed.

But she was already falling apart, unraveling like silk between her own fingers.

The memories were coming _back_.

She bit her cheek, blood running clean over her teeth as she forced her hands to steady, getting to her feet like a new calf, stunned and still glistening with the force of memory. Dimly, she picked the glass out of her palms, blinking at the sound each shard made when it tapped into the aluminum sink.

She looked up, and almost did not recognize her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Her eyes were clouded, heavy, a distant fear creasing the edges, mouth pursed and withdrawn like a child wrapped in dim terror.

She wanted Shiva back. She wanted the cold numbness of GF amnesia, the cold and distant power that flowed through her veins and softened her memories into a distant, wet blur of water colored voices. The veins in her arms throbbed, the pain coming alive again. It was like a living thing, this pain, a monster that was gnawing at her from the inside out.

She put her hands to her face, leaving bloody smears behind. She wanted to forget again, to forget feelings, faces, and this, this terrible dream...She could feel it resurfacing again, faster and darker...darker and faster... chasing after her like a dark, unseen demon…

It would catch her soon.

She stumbled blindly through the room- she had to get away from these memories, they were so close, and so horrible, and she was afraid...

She dodged hallway goers, losing Cerberus somewhere in the fray and dimly hearing her own apology as she knocked into one of the cadets.

Out into the snow, out into the open air. She knew it was foolish to run. The same legs that carried her belonged to the same brain that carried the memory. It didn't have to find her.

_It had her already._

She had to get out of there.

The cold hit her like a welcome slap in the face as she barreled down the Quad steps, away from Garden. Silence engulfed her ears, quiet save for the sound of her footsteps echoing in the snow.

The snow gave way to a distant forest, and she stumbled towards it, the cold numbing her fevered skin. The snow-drifts were nearly knee-high, and the top crust sank into her boots, deadening her feet and slowing her run to a jerky crawl.

_Sitting by the window, looking out at the snow, waiting…_

"No _no_ **no**……" she chanted brokenly, stumbling blindly through the snowy drifts. She grabbed a tree branch, the snow shaking down from the bow in a falling sheet as she stumbled faster, branches stinging her face.

She fell to her knees, hands tangled in her hair, fingers pressed hard against skull to block out the terrible visions, wishing that Shiva would rise from the icy crust and grant her immunity to her past once again. She bit her cheek, hard, blood flowing between her teeth, between her lips, her tears splattering against her open palm, the smooth pink scar already spilled across it from long ago.

"Stop it!" she shouted to the desolate field. "_Stop it_!"

Silence.

_The steam was hot against her cheeks, fingers curled over the edge of the stove. The woman behind her, noodles boiling on a hot burner, the smell of steam and pasta grain fresh in her nose and condensing in small droplets on her lips._

_Too close to the stove. Too hot. But the woman was behind her, and she couldn't back up. She couldn't get away, and the woman's arms were held out, bruises at the junction of her elbow and small red pin cushion pricks on the heads of her projecting veins. _

_The woman had used the needles again. The needles made her even crazier than the liquor._

_"The stove is hot. Haven't I told you that?"_

_"Yes." She hated how her voice sounded so tiny, so fragile, as if the woman could just reach out and snap it like a dry noodle. _

_"And yet you still go near it." _

_She recognized the woman's tone, and fear crept along her stomach, shivering at the edges of her lips. The tone meant a lesson was coming._

_The lessons were never pleasant._

_"I just wanted to see the noodles cooking. I…I didn't touch anything." There were those brittle words again._

_Weakling._

_Snap, snap. The heat of the stove was getting closer now, hot against her cheeks. She tried to back up again, but the woman blocked her._

_"I told you that the stove was hot."_

_She bit her lip. "You said it already. I know that. I'm not an idiot." The words were out of her lips before she could stop them. They were the wrong words, and she knew it. These words could not be snapped…but the woman would bend them and twist them into something horrible, something unrecognizable-_

_"You're a stupid little girl. You're going to get burned so easily…" The woman snatched her shoulder, the manicured fingers cutting into her small bones. "You don't believe me that the stove is hot, just like you don't believe those boys will burn you. Burn right through you. You need to see it. Feel it. Touch fire. Then you'll remember. _**Then**_ you'll know."_

She tried to shrink her hand away, but the woman's grip was like iron. "But you just **told**_ me. I'll remember!"_

"Give me your hand."

She struggled. "No, I-"

"GIVE ME YOUR HAND."

Her hand being snatched, pressed, and the burner looming up, the head prickling against her palm as the burner rose up to meet tender flesh-

"No!" She stumbled on, the cluttered forest giving way to an open field, the deep snow interrupted by the dead, dry tops of the grasses that still poked through the snow, the once vibrant wildflowers of the field now buried alive in the cold.

Her stomach churned as another flash darted behind her lids. The wind whistled through the deadened heads of the grasses, the floating whisper a mocking one against her ears as yet another wave of memory came up, swallowing her-

_-sitting on the grass in the backyard, which stretched for emerald miles. There was a huge garden with big, pretty flowers that were taller than her head. She folded up her knees, looking up at the sky and watching the birds swim around it with their pretty wings._

_She smelt his cologne before the grass bent beneath his wing-tipped shoes. He was a constant presence- he brought her mother packages of white power and syringes on a daily basis, when her father was at work. He was older, and a little heavy- and he was always smiling at her._

_"Keeping the flowers company, Quistis?"_

_She looked up and forced a polite smile. "Yes."_

_"May I sit down next to you?"_

_"Yes." She said, scooting over to allow him room in the garden patch. Her dress was itchy, and she inched it up past her knees. They were awkward, nine-year-old legs, skinny and pale and knobby and ugly. She was an ugly girl, or so the woman told her all the time._

_Her hair was down, itchy on her back, and she watched as a grasshopper jumped across the lawn, legs gripping at the leaves. A bee was sitting on a leaf next to her, cleaning its antennae._

_"Did you have a good day today, Quisty?" _

_She nodded, staring at the grass. She'd escaped from the woman today- those days were always good. "Did you?"_

_He chuckled. "Getting better. Your mother didn't have enough to pay me with this month. Do you know what that means?"_

_"No."_

_"You will." He leaned back on his hands, his business suit unbuttoned. He was sweating around the collar. If her father knew this man was here, he would be very upset. _

_He looked over at her, reaching out his hand and ran it through her hair. "Your hair is getting so long…and your eyes…such pretty eyes! Sometimes I forget how young you are."_

_The man was always bringing her nice gifts- big books and pencils, ribbons for her hair… _

_He didn't treat her like a child._

_The touch on her scalp was soothing, loving, a gesture she hadn't enjoyed in far too long. Her father was never home, and the woman never touched her…not lovingly, anyway. And for a moment, she would have given anything if he would only love her….but she knew he did not love her. None of them did. _

_"You're a very pretty girl. Don't you know how pretty you are?"_

_There was something wrong with his touch, something heavy and heated. She shrunk away just a bit, the shrink of her spine gone unnoticed by the man next to her. He was staring off into the distance; as if he were unaware of his own hand, breath just a little heavy, eyes glazed._

_Her knee jumped, and he chuckled. "Shhhh. It's all right. This is how you're mother's going to pay me this month."_

_This wasn't right. It felt like molten lead in her stomach, a fire that spread up to her throat. But she sat, quietly, and didn't say a thing._

_She stared at the grass. Any minute now, her knight would come and get her, and take her away on his horse. And they would ride so fast, so fast that all of this would just melt away and be gone forever, gone in the past where it couldn't get her anymore. The man's hand was on her knee, now, pulling it open, and every muscle in her was still and stiff, and she could hear her heart in her ears-_

_The knight never came that day...he never came at all._

_And the man's hand continued to touch her, there in the long grass, hidden from the world where only the sky could see. She was a dirty, horrible girl, and nobody wanted her. Nobody but him…._

_But it **hurt**…_

_She bit back a sob, tearing handfuls of grass with her fists. _

_Quietly, quietly.__ Shhhhh….don't make a sound. _

_Don't make a sound. _

_It was the first time, but it would not be the last._

_Long after he had left, she didn't move. Her dress was torn, and the pain was sticky…dirty…._

_The birds had stopped singing._

_The time seemed to stretch on forever, and the grasshopper was going to fall off the leaf, fall off into forever, and she wished so hard and so feverently that she was not a pretty girl until the darkness fell on the gardenias and Milifon came and found her._

_He wrapped her in a warm afghan and rocked her in the large wooden rocking chair in the kitchen, and his hands were warm, just warm, and he sang to her in his strange language until she fell asleep. _

_Milifon__ kept the secrets of the house. It was Milifon that picked up the shattered vases and took the stains from the furniture, all with a quiet, firm dignity she would never see equaled in her lifetime. He was, perhaps, the only one in that whole, miserable house that cared for her…but he could not take her away. There was nowhere that the master's money did not reach…_

**Snow**.

Quistis opened her eyes, knee-deep in the icy drifts and her fingernails buried in her temples. She was crying now, and so tired. But there were more memories, so many more memories….

_She was running away. She was walking down the sidewalk with a plastic bag with an apple, five gil, and a pair of tennis shoes two sizes too small. Her hand was burning- the pain traveled all the way up her arm and into her heart, and beat with an unsteady rhythm there. It was a constant pain, but a pain she was used to feeling. The oven was hot. The oven was always hot and she was always going to be a stupid girl. She barely felt the pain anymore. It was almost familiar._

_She was going home. Home to Matron, to Squall and Seifer and Ellone and Selphie and __Irvine__ and Zell and Cid and the ocean._

_She didn't know where she was going, but thought perhaps if she walked long enough, she would get there._

_She walked for hours, until her sneakers started to pinch her feet and the pain in her hand started to make her sick. Her head felt hot, and her mouth was dry, and the ocean wasn't anywhere to be seen. Tears burned in her eyes, and she wished, against all reason, that someone would come for her- ride in on a white horse and scoop her up and take her to a place where there wasn't any pain._

_She heard the car behind her, and recognized the gentle rumble of the engines, and wished, for a moment, that it was any other car, and she was any other girl with any other life._

_But she had long ago begun to realize that dreams seemed to come true for anyone but her. _

_She turned around without a second thought, and got into the car without a word. Wishes were just cars that never came, and reality was always the car that did._

_She would be punished for running away. She could hear the woman's footsteps on the stairs, and heard the click of the door as it was opened. She had been sitting in one of the stiff-backed chairs by the window, gazing out at the fall colors with no particular interest in any of them._

_"Running away again? How far did you get this time, the corner store?" The voice was low, mocking. _

_She didn't answer. The woman never wanted her questions answered. They were like everything else the woman said, spoken to hear her own voice echo in the empty house and her own empty heart. _

_"You wanted to leave?" asked the woman, placing her hands on the back of the chair. Quistis felt her body shrink away in trepidation of touch. _

_"You ungrateful little brat!__ Look at all I've given you, and you appreciate none of it! Still you cling to that little slum by the sea and those filthy little urchins!"_

_She didn't answer, only stared at the maple tree in the back whose leaves were falling in the wind. _

_The woman grabbed her shoulders, her red nails cutting into her shoulders. "Well, why don't you wish them here? Why don't you call them up and ask them to come and get you? Maybe one of those little boys you're so fond up will ride up on a little white pony and take you away, hmm?"_

_It was a beautiful thought._

_Her eyes must have lit up a little, because the woman started laughing. "Well, then, why not just sit there and wish your life away, you little fool?"_

_Quistis cringed. The woman's grip was hurting her. _

_"Yes, you sit there and wish for your fairy tale, and we'll see if it comes true."_

_The door slammed behind her._

_She watched the path, the hope in her breast a flapping dove that sped up her heart, stirring life in her chest. She watched as each leaf fell on the street, scuttling into the wind like a lost, discarded dream. She watched the sun sink further into the horizon and watched the sky grow red with dusk._

_Each hour, her body sunk deeper into the chair. _

_She sat for fourteen hours…until the sky got dark and Milifon came to gently pluck her body from the chair. She did not resist as he carried her up the second set of stairs to the large, cold room that was her bedroom and tucked her beneath the sheets. She stared up at the ceiling, tears wetting her pillow into a small linen lake._

_They never came._

The snow was cold against her hands, but only faintly so. She straightened up, clawing her way back to her footing, and she ran again, headlong down another snowy hill and the further into the frost.

_Further into her memories…_

_She sat huddled up against her door, the brass knobs on the door dead bolted as many times as the locks would allow. _

_But the locks didn't block out the screaming._

_She could hear their voices reverberate against the door- the shouting, the screaming.. It seemed as if with every shout, the house would fall around her, boards and marble, and crimson velvet scorched and tattered by the force of their anger. Each word was a hammer, each shout and insult that battered her as if they were fists thrust into her own tiny body._

_"Home again. Tired of the whores?"_

_"No, tired of coming home to one."_

_The dull sound of slapping.__ She could see in her mind his cheek turn quickly under the quick motion of her palm, could see the bright mark left there just as surely as if the door did not separate them at all. She'd seen it often enough before._

_She shut her eyes tightly, tiny fists balled at her side, as she feverently wished herself away from all their fighting._

_To no avail._

_"That's fine, you pathetic prick! Go on, open the door. That's right. Walk outside, leave. It's what you do best. It's the only thing you do well, in fact!" _

_He drove her to drink, she drove him to leave._ _And around and around and around they went._

_The door slammed shut once again, the sound clamoring through her heart like an anvil cleanly struck. She opened her eyes, surprised that entire house had not simply crumbled with the sound-_

"Stop it!" she shouted, head throbbing against her palms as the last of the amnesia faded, and she felt with terror the last of the walls crumble down like sand at her mind's foot. She would remember now, all of it- every cold dinner and stinging slap, every hurt and pain and tear-

She cast desperate eyes up to the sky, snowflakes kissing her cheeks with their cold, thin lips.

_Snow_.

**_No_**.

An image flashed across her eyes, and she gasped, fumbling for something sturdy as she stumbled backwards in terror. She fought it reflexively, trying to think of something, anything, but the memory persisted, hitching its hooks in her mind and jerking it open, spilling in like poison-

_It was the first snowfall in her new home. She sat at one of the large bay windows in the grand dining hall on one of the window boxes, feet tucked beneath her as she gazed out on the rapidly filling lawn. She was dressed in a pair of flannel pajamas with cuffs too long for her feet, the edges hastily rolled with the care of a six year old with better things to do._

_The cold from the gaps in the old windows was a prickle against her pale skin, but Jippers on her lap kept the cold at bay. The old, somewhat cantankerous tomcat was being sociable in favor of the old, drafty mansion today, but she couldn't say that she really minded the company._

_Milifon__ had made her special blueberry pancakes this morning before he was dismissed, the way Matron would have. Milifon was a nice, gentle old man- she wished he had been able to stay and play checkers and have cocoa like he sometimes did. But she was glad he had time to make the pancakes before he left. Now she could close her eyes and stuff a forkful of pancake into her mouth, letting the other sounds fade around her. _

_Now she could pretend._

_After all, at the orphanage it was Seifer's birthday today, and blueberry pancakes were his favorite. She smiled a little, and thought of being back at the orphanage. Matron would make blueberry pancakes with six candles in them, because today, he was six, like her, and blueberry pancakes were his favorite. Zelly would eat too many and get sick, just like he always did. Selphie would start the singing of the song, and even Squall would at least mumble along to the words. Ellone's voice was the prettiest. _

_She was happy as she ate her pancakes, like she could almost pretend she was there with them, sharing in the small celebration. She closed her eyes and imagined their faces. Maybe they thought about her, a little. Maybe they missed her._

_She wanted to see Squall, and Ellone, and Selphie, wanted to see Seifer kick over her sandcastles and make her mad, wanted to play house with __Irvine__ and chase fireflies with Cid…_

_She opened her eyes to a long, oak table that seemed to stretch on forever, and a silent house with no joy in it or people to share her pancakes with._

_She sniffled. _

_She wanted to go home. _

_Her stomach rumbled, disturbing Jipper's sleep. He cracked an eyelid, staring disdainfully up at her with his one good eye before she petted him back to sleep. _

_He was gone. And when he was gone, 'she' never came out of her room. _

_At least, not to do anything that didn't involve screaming. Or drinking. Or both._

_She glanced back, looking at the empty winding staircase, the red carpet winding up like a rippling silk ribbon in a half spiral shape. There, at the end of the door, was 'her' room. It would smell like gin by now, the stink permeating the entire hallway. _

_Quistis shuddered. She wished hard with eyes squeezed shut that the door remained closed all day._

_She looked around her, eyes dully glossing over all the intricately carved oak chairs and banisters, over the ancient tapestries that trailed down the long bay windows, over the vases and artifacts that sat on polished white marble stands. At first, the pretty things had made the old house seem like a paradise. After all, the Collyns had so many pretty things, and were such pretty people, that everybody thought they lived in a fairy tale._

_Her parents, however, had pretty things to disguise how ugly their lives really were._

_A crash sounded from the room up the stairs, and Quistis winced. She had broken another mirror. _

_Current calculation not withstanding, the woman was now destined to have three hundred and eighty-five bad years of luck._

_Silence.__ This meant the woman was either looking for something else to break, or had fallen back asleep._

_Don't come downstairs, don't come downstairs, don't come, don't come, _**please**_……………_

_Quistis closed her eyes, and tried to imagine a knight made out of snow coming to save her. _

_But he wasn't coming. _

_She pressed her forehead against the window and fell asleep._

_She woke up as headlights flickered across her eyelids. She opened her eyes to a world four years past, and little different from its preceding years. The snow had fallen, and 'she' had stayed upstairs all day, throwing vases against the door and wailing like a banshee with no one to entice but the demons in the bottle._

_Quistis shifted. It was dark out, and her feet were numb from sitting on them. The snow was deep now, the crust settled and sparkling in the moonlight. Her heart leapt, then sank back down into the pit of her stomach at the sight of the tall man in the suit coming towards the door, briefcase in hand, holding it like it weighed at least two tons. In there, he said, was the Collyn's burden, a portfolio of political expectations handed down like cufflinks. He said it made his briefcase very heavy, and that was why he was so tired. Quistis often wondered if 'they', were in there too. She was always screaming about how he came home carrying, 'them', bringing their filth home with him. _

_At any rate, he was home. _

_It could begin._

_Quistis heard the upstairs master bedroom door open, heard footsteps coming down. Her cue to leave, a practice perfected in four years time. She grabbed a much-aged Jippers, a half-dead feline now composed of fur, bones, and a will to live that seemed more born of spite than anything else, and scrambled into the kitchen. She flattened herself behind the door and held the cat close until he wriggled away in annoyance of her tight, feverent clasp, hissing as he darted under the table. _

_The front door opened, and she quickly pressed her hands to her ears in preparation of the shouting that would follow. She squeezed her eyes shut and imagined, conjured up what images her ten-year-old mind could muster. Images that were untainted-_

_--**Running through the fields aside the orphanage, gathering caterpillars from the milky stalks that sprouted up behind the logs, playing with the crayfish in the spring. Squall had his cut-offs hiked up above his knees, a stern look on his face as he cupped at the water, trying to get one of the tiny little crustaceans into his hand. Zell, shrieking, as his hard-shelled captive got hold of his finger, and Seifer was laughing, holding his sides**--_

_"Well, look what the cat dragged in." came the voice, sharp as daggers despite the weight of vodka in it. She had always carried her liquor like she held her temper. _

_Poorly._

_It was a terrible consistency._

_"Mariah, don't-" His face was tired, as always, weariness worn down further by the scratch of her voice._

_"Don't you don't me, you faggot! I know where you've been-"_

_"Look at you- you're drunk again." He chuckled, harsh laughter, verbal sandpaper they rubbed on each other's skin so they could rub salt in the burns later. "What a surprise."_

_Quistis pressed herself up harder against the corner of the door, gritting her teeth and bracing herself against their words. Her eyes traveled over the framed picture in the kitchen corner: picture of a tall, handsome man with blonde hair and a winning smile, and his bride, dressed in white lace and beaded satin, a dark-haired princess with glittering dark eyes, perfect curls, and a happy, open smile._

_Quistis pressed her hands close to her ears. It was easy for pictures to lie. _

_She closed her eyes again, and tried to remember something happier…_

_--**Ellone**** was making daisy chains, and everybody got one, even Seifer who pretended to hate it but took it anyway, plucking off the heads and throwing them at Zell, who started to cry. She sat in the soft grass and laughed at Squall, who was being buried in a pile of grass by Selphie and **_**_Irvine_****_ with a sullen expression on his face_**_--_

_"Yes, I'm drunk, you bastard. And so what? I can do what I like-"_

_"You look like shit, and you reek of gin. Where's Trabia's debutant now? All I see is a washed up trophy wife."_

_"At least I don't reek of prostitutes, you son of a bitch-"_

_Smash. The thin crack of the door revealed a two hundred year-old Centrarian ritual mask splintering just to the right of the wall behind his skull. The mask was one of his favorites. Quistis pressed her hands to her ears as hard as she could. Perhaps she could drown out the sound._

_That was how she got back at him. She broke his pretty things._

_"Go ahead, Mariah. Throw your temper tantrum. See where it gets you, besides further in the hole."_

_"Oh, really?__ Maybe next I'll break your balls, cut off that impotent little worm of yours-"_

_"Doesn't take you long to reach into the gutter, does it?" He was screaming now. He wasn't **political** now, not the clean cut, immaculately groomed man that smiled for the papers, his pretty wife on his arm as he discussed his policies for the good of the city._

_His 'little wife' was sobbing, mascara running in thick black rivers down her cheeks, dark hair stuck to her face and fingers curled like claws._

_She wasn't pretty now. _

_And he was far from charming._

_"Oh, well, it doesn't matter to the whores, does it?" she whispered furiously. "You're a fucking joke, and I'll make sure everyone knows-" _

_Crack. Her head snapped around, and she staggered back, tripping on her heels and falling in a graceless heap to the floor. Terek was looking at his hand as if it were a foreign thing that had betrayed him. _

_Quistis bit back a sob on her lip as she touched her own cheek, shutting her eyes again as the door hinge cut into her back._

_He had never hit her before._

_Just remember……..just think of something else…….._

_--"**Quisty****, what the hell ya doing up there? It's time fer dinner." A short, but relatively robust little boy looked up at her, eyes squinting like a cat in the sun. He wore an oversized black t-shirt with cut-off sleeves and a pair of baggy shorts that did little to cover up his skinned knees and sunburnt shoulders. His hair was too long; blonde bangs bobbed in his eyes, hair curling beneath his ears. He had, with varying success, evaded Matron's hair scissors thus far that summer. His face was dirty.**_

**_Her own skinned knees dangled beneath her, dwarfed by the tumbled green ground beneath. He knew why she was up here. _**

**_She always climbed too high………_**

**_She refused to meet his eyes. "Don't swear, remember what Matron said. I'll tell-"_**

**_"You ain't gonna tell Matron nothing……not from up there." He grinned, a grin that would carry in the years ahead and only become more cynical as time went by. It never ceased to make her want to punch him in the eye. Still, she took a kind of comfort in his feral confidence, in the way he seemed to command their little world, even if he did annoy her to no conceivable end._**

**_"You shut up!" she shouted, wishing that she really did have the courage to jump down and give him a decent black eye. Looking down, however, at the way the ground swayed beneath her, she was forced to question just how exactly she got up in the first place. She vaguely remembered something about _****_Irvine_****_ and a dare. Irvine, however, had been forced to eat a bug, so she had to wonder just who got the better end of the deal. _****_Irvine_****_ was at dinner, at least. It was lonely up here._**

**_"Gonna make me? From down here?" he folded his arms, grin widening. "Bossy Quisty's a chicken!"_**

**_"I am not!" she shouted back, wishing she was in a pine cone tree so she'd have something to pelt him with. "Go 'n leave me alone! I can get down just fine by myself! I don't need your help!"_**

**_He folded his arms. "Who said anything 'bout helping?" He squinted. "I can see up yer skirt!"_**

**_"Can't!"_****_ She could feel her face turning red, a heat that ran deeper than her sunburn._**

**_"Can too! Chicken Quisty's got pink _**_girly** underwear!" **_

**_Before she could think, she flew at him, launching herself from the tree and straight onto her mocker below. They tumbled to the ground, a squirming knot of arms, legs and shouts still they landed in a tangle in the weeds, Quistis on top of the sunburnt pile of skin. _**

**_"Seifer!" she gasped. "You're a-"_**

**_He just grinned up at her, the wicked grin of a Cheshire cat. "Gotcha down, didn't I?"_**

_Quistis was startled out of her daze by the remote shatter of another vase._

_Trembling, Quistis pressed her back to the wall, and inched along the side, ducking under the bottom of the stairs and curling her small body around the railing. Crab walking, she inched up the stairs, hands thudding softly on the Persian carpets. They were far to the bottom; neither of them saw her. _

_If she could just get to her room in time, there was a lock on the door; she could lock the world away-_

_Her mother was laughing from her vantage point on the floor now. "Why, Terek, I didn't think you had it in you." She hissed, struggling to her feet. "Aren't we a big man now? Huh? Let's tell all your boyfriends what a big man you are."_

_He didn't flinch. "Where's our daughter?"_

_A twisted smile formed on her face, eyes glittering with a malice only the drink brought out in her. The other politician's wives had begun to watch Mariah with a kind of strange unease around her daughter lately, like a snake around foreign eggs. Everyone heard the whispers, that behind Mariah's motherly smile was a heart black with jealousy for all the attention Terek had always doted on his pretty, intelligent little girl. She resented the child for the attention her own husband denied her, and it came out in ugly ways._

_"Maybe I sold her for a bottle of gin." A bruise was forming on the side of her face. _

_He glared at her. "I **said**, where is our daughter!"_

_"Our daughter!" she laughed. "What a joke! That second-hand orphan was poison from the second she walked through our door. She isn't normal…she doesn't play with dolls, she never smiles, she just sits in front of the window all day like a deaf mute! You should hear the people talk!"_

_"Where.__ Is. She." Terek's teeth were clenched. _

_"How would I know?" she spat, getting to her feet as she spun around. She staggered to the top of the staircase. "She's your little **treasure**, you find her. I'm filing for divorce tomorrow, you son of a bitch. Let's see what Trabia's officials think of that. You can bet on a scandal, which I can guarantee has better odds than that shitty poker game of yours."_

"You know I'll never give you a divorce." He replied coldly.

_She turned, her eyes remarkably clear for a moment, wet with tears.. "But you won't be my husband either, will you?" she asked quietly. Perfect mixture of bitterness and sadness, the same drink that slid so easily down her throat every night between the sips of whiskey._

_He didn't answer, and Mariah's hand tightened on the railing at the top of the stairs. A mirror glared back at her, reflecting the wilted flower that was once Trabia's most precious rose, the image of her fool husband below her. _

_Reflections of failure, ugliness.__ Something Mariah Collyns would not tolerate. Not in herself. Not in her house._

_Letting out an enraged scream, she grabbed a vase on a corner table below the mirror and smashed it into the round, glassy face. _

_The face of her failure, his failure, their failure, glittered down onto the carpet in a thousand different shards._

_She looked up in the remaining silver teeth of the mirror and caught the frightened eyes of the little girl behind her, shrunk against the pillar in the glass's reflection. Her smile widened. _

_After all, their little adopted daughter was Terek's **prettiest** pretty little thing._

_"**There** she is!" she called, her voice sing-song and dark. She lunged at the little girl before she could scramble away, grabbing her by her long blonde hair and dragging her squirming little body out from behind the pillar. She reveled at the look of horror on her husband's face._

_"Here we are, Terek. Here's your pretty little thing. I wonder… would you mind if I broke **this**?" _

_He held up his hands. "Mariah, don't. She has nothing to do with this." _

_She jerked the girl forward, Quistis' skull stinging with the force. "You know what those women say behind my back! They know! They've always known! This…this **orphan** is not our daughter! This is nothing but family costume jewelry we bought to distract their ravenous eyes, to stop the whispers………but they all know the truth. Trabia's debutant is barren…and her husband prefers the whores! This is not our daughter! This is another lie that doesn't work!"_

_Quistis bit back a sob. She felt her 'mother's' breath on her neck, warm and ragged and so thick with vodka that the stench itself was almost intoxicating. Her mother's breath bubbled in her throat, and Quistis felt something sharp at her neck. She looked down, and saw her own terrified face reflected up at her. It was a shard from the mirror. _

_"Mariah-"_

_"You think I haven't seen how you look at her?" screamed his wife. "You think I don't see how you parade her around on your arm like a cheap trinket? I wonder, Terek, would _**this**_ little treasure be so easy to glue back together? Get some paste, some thread. Stitch back together her **pretty little face**."_

_It had never been this out of control before. There was always shouting, screaming, shattering glass, but none of this. _

_Quistis, of course, had no idea that at the time her mother had taken half a bottle of refined speed with half a bottle of vodka, and that Terek had just lost more than half their fortune in a game of craps._

_"Mariah, please, you're sick. Just come with me, and we'll go to the hospital, and it things will be like they used to be-"_

_"Don't try to _**placate**_ me, you gutter-bred son of a bitch! You'll send me to an institution, and then all your little whores will crawl all over my house, spreading their filth-"_

_"Please let me go," sobbed Quistis. "I'll go in my room. I promise!"_

_"Shut up, you little whore!" shouted the enraged woman behind her, slapping her hard in the face. Her neck jerked back…the room swam. "You never could behave, never could be a good little girl, a proper daughter-"_

_This was not her mother. _

_From somewhere, a flash of anger coiled up in her belly. _

_"I'd rather be dead than your daughter!" she shouted, struggling._

_The shard cut into her neck, the long, numb pain of a bee sting just above her collar bone. "And your mother would rather be dead than your mother!" The woman spat back nastily. "Look, you see? This faggot is not your father. This is a man who has made fools of us all, who leaves us and comes back when it suits his politically engineered little loins. When he's lost money, and needs more of mine. Well, I'm done." She jerked her forward, and Quistis tripped, and landing on her side, tumbling down two of the steps before jerking back with a cry._

_Her **mother** hadn't let go of her hair. _

_"Please stop it! Stop it! It hurts!"_

_"Mariah, **don't**-" pleaded her father, body wanting to rush forward but stopped by the glass shard at his ten-year-old daughter's throat._

_"Don't you **DON'T** me! No one makes a fool out of Mariah Strepora! I am the daughter of the wealthiest man in Timber! I am the one who jumpstarted your little career! I am the one who made you something, you little shit! I loved you! I trusted you! I gave you **everything**!" During this speech, she continued her walk down the stairs, advancing on him, Quistis in tow, hauled behind her like an oversized rag doll, the shard just barely preceding her neck. "And you gave me nothing! Don't you see? There's nothing left! There's nothing left but lies!"_

_Quistis' cries came out in spasms, spine jerking with every step. She kicked out with her feet, trying desperately to drag them and slow her descent. Her mother's grip, however, was stronger, although the grown woman had to slouch slightly with the weight of the ten-year-old under her grip in attempt to gain leverage in her high heels._

_There were forty terrible stairs on the main staircase, and the red winding carpet did very little to mask the hardness of the marble beneath. _

_The world was spinning, tumbling, the chandelier and the snow outside a glassy swirl that rose and fell and rose and fell like the blood in her mouth, which splashed against her teeth with every bump of the step. The shouts and screams were getting fainter, the lights dimming with every jolt._

_She cried out, hands clawing desperately at the wooden pegs, but the woman jerked her down, down-_

_…down into hell with her….._

_"Shit, Mariah! Have you gone crazy?" came the distant shout. _

_"No, Terek, I haven't. I see now with abundant clarity just how simple things are." Her eyes were fanatical, liquid pools of dark, swirling lunacy, and Quistis looked up, dazed, to see the mixture of madness and mascara. "Terek Collyns sat on a wall," the voice was singsong, mocking. _

_Loud._

_"Mariah, put her down. Hyne, put her **down**-"_

_"Terek Collyns had a great fall-"_

_"Please-" her own voice, softly begging, a faint whisper. Her head was jerked forward in response. _

_This was not her mother. _

**_My mother is dead._**

_She shut her eyes again. They would come for her. If she just wished hard enough, they would come again and things would be all right…._

_Her mother's deranged shouts broke through her hazy vision, the pain in her side forcing another pathetic scream from her throat. It hurt so much to breathe- _

_Matron, Squall….Seifer……Ellone…Irvine…their names tumbled brokenly from her lips, her wish for a different time and place lost between the shards of this house, lost in the glittery decadence of their downfall. She grasped at her hair, trying to pull herself loose-_

_But why?__ No one was coming. _

_The truth sank in, finally, and all the fire within her small form, every ounce of sweltering hope, turned to cold._

_She dropped her hands, vision dimming as she stared out at the snowfall though the window, tears blurring in her eyes. Her stepmother was still screaming, still tearing at her hair, but Quistis did not resist. _

_What was the use? No one was coming for her. There were no dreams left in her small body to break._

_"And all the king's horses, and all king's men-"_

_"**MARIAH DON'T**-"_

_She heard him shout, felt a swift jerk at the back of her head, and then nothing. _

_She would wake up later on a hospital cot with one missing baby tooth, three bruised ribs, but remarkably, no broken bones. A cut on her neck required only five dissolvable stitches. _

_She fell down the stairs. The doctor did not ask questions. The Collyns family's money was too far spread for questions._

_Her hair, her golden hair that had once reached her waist, had been hacked to chin length by the razor sharp edge of a mirror piece. Rapunzel. No prince would come for her now…although she had stopped believing in fairy tales long ago. _

_They gave her drugs to ease the pain of breathing, and she drifted in and out of consciousness, swimming in a sea of memories both good and terrible. The hospital report would read that she had fallen down some stairs. Only five people would know the difference, although some would suspect. There would be whispers._

_There would always be whispers._

_She had applied for admission to Garden the next day, sneaking out of the hospital before 'they' could come and collect her and take her back to the prison that they called a house. Garden promised food. Shelter. A place to learn and free schooling. It would be more of a home than she had had for years._

_She stood at the edge of the road, thumb jutted out and hair stuck to her face. It hurt to walk, to breathe, but the air had never been so pure…_

_The man that stopped had been a potbellied gentle giant, his truck smelling of tobacco and french-fries, pictures of a plump, smiling woman and two robust boys grinning at the camera. A crayon drawing of a dragon was taped next to the CB radio He had a family. She wondered if it was happy…if happy families existed at all…. _

_The man was kind and bought her some hash browns with ketchup packets and a glass of orange juice at a local diner.. She wished for a moment he was her father, and that she could ride in his truck forever and ever and just pretend. She could be good enough for him…for somebody…she could me more than a lie._

**Couldn't she?**

_"Where you goin', honey?"_

_She'd looked out the window at the winding landscape, some innate sense of direction leading the way, away from danger, back to the only family she had ever known. _

_"Home."__ A ghost of a smile had touched her lips, the first real one in years. She was a bird with broken wings, flying on a flimsy prayer, the dim hope of warm sunlight on her back…_

_She had been wheezing from the pressure on her ribs and self-conscious of the new, lopsided cut of her once-long hair, but the man at the front gate had been very kind, very understanding. _

**_Very_**_ surprised._

_The Collyns, given the nature of her previous visit to the hospital and their very public political nature, were in no position to demand custody, and Quistis herself had a feeling that both Matron and Cid had had a good say in her permanent admittance. It was a guilt of sorts, she was sure, but whatever it was, it allowed her to stay._

_Her supervisors, in light of her recent trauma, had begun her junctioning right away, in hopes that her amnesia would be the balm that soothed her obviously damaged spirit……Shiva's first touch was kind and gentle, numbing….and she gave herself to it. She did not want to remember, not ever. Shiva sang her to sleep that first night and Quistis trusted in that icy cradle…and began to forget._

_She built up her walls. No one would touch here here._

_She sent a message to the mail office to have all letters from the Collyns discarded and threw herself into her work, her books, her training. After awhile, the letters stopped coming. She forgot everything save the vague but relentless notion love was poison…_

Quistis fell to the ground, a broken movement made jerky by the uneven collapse of her knees. Tears ran down her cheeks in freezing streams, making tiny holes in the snow.

Now she remembered why the side of the bed next to hers was always cold, why she tried so very hard to be alone.

She had loved her parents, and they had used her against each other. Her mother's love had been crippled with her own self-loathing, and her father's was sick. Blindly, she had offered her love to Squall, and been flatly turned down with as much compassion as her mother had when she dragged her down the stairs. She was no one's daughter. She was no one's lover. She was no one's anything.

She was perfect and she was dependable and she belonged to no one.

She remembered now.

The snow rose up to embrace her as she stared dimly into the icy depths, burying her hands in the snow as she leaned over and sobbed for breath. It was so cold, and she was so very tired.

_……….And all the king's horses, and all the king's men……_

_……….Couldn't put Quistis Trepe back together again……………_


	29. Bittersweet Symphonies

Author's Notes: This is where the story earns its M rating. You've all been warned. It's by no means explicit, but the material **is** mature, although I still maintain that I can't write good sex to save my life. This chapter has undergone major construction, as well, for those of you who are reading this the third time around. (and if you are, thank you!) And you should all check out the wonderful art that's been done for this story on Deviantart- you are all so talented, I'm so very honored! And, should any of you want to draw more….well…..you'd have one very happy author! Many thanks to my beta and best good livejournal budy, meleskulia- you're the best!

Disclaimer: Don't own them.

You look so fine  
I want to break your heart  
And give you mine  
You're taking me over

It's so insane  
You've got me tethered and chained  
I hear your name  
And I'm falling over

You look so fine  
I'm like the desert tonight  
Leave it behind  
If you want to show me

Let's pretend, happy end

'You Look So Fine' by Garbage (recommended)

…

She's not the kind of girl  
Who likes to tell the world  
About the way she feels about herself  
She takes a little time in making up her mind  
She doesn't want to fight against the tide

And lately I'm not the only one  
I say never trust anyone

Always the one who has to drag her down  
Maybe you'll get what you want this time around

Can't bear to face the truth  
So sick he cannot move  
And when it hurts he takes it out on you

She knows the human heart  
And how to read the stars  
Now everything's about to fall apart  
I won't be the one who's going to let you down  
Maybe you'll get what you want this time around  
-The Trick is to Keep Breathing –Garbage (both songs are recommended listening for this chapter. Also recommended listening: "Breathe Me" by Sia, and just about anything by Live)

…

…

…

A few students milled around in the snow, their faces tight with worry. Some glanced back at him before walking inside, a look which he happily returned with a dark stare of his own. Would they never get tired of staring at him? He'd long ago grown tired of being _looked_ _at_, that was for damned sure.

_Don't look at me_, he thought, _I didn't shoot him_. He sat on one of the Quad benches, his back hunched against the wind and his old, tattered trench coat collar pulled up around his neck.

Really, the news of Cid's condition had hit him as hard as the others. While the Instructors at Garden had become frustrated, fed-up, and generally hated his guts, Cid had always been hopeful, his reprimands gentle and almost sad. His times spent in Cid's office probably involved the least yelling he'd ever been subject to. Like the rest of them, Cid hadn't known quite what to do with him, but he was never resentful. Just sad….and more so after the war.

He and Cid had never talked much, especially after the Sorceress War. Their list of safe things to discuss had gotten considerably shorter. What the hell was he supposed to say to a man whose wife he knew as well as he did?

'_Crazy in bed, your wife…how are the new contracts coming along, Cid?' _

He had happier childhood memories of Cid….Cid with his pants rolled up, chasing them through the water. Cid, letting Quistis, Ellone, and Selphie push him on the swing….Cid, showing them how to catch butterflies without crushing their wings…Cid had rarely been home, but when he had, the children had all crowded around him, starved for paternal affection. He was like a kid at heart himself. Cid had been so different from his own father, and Seifer had never really trusted him because of it. He kept waiting for the day when Cid's hand would finally descend on him…but it never did, no matter how bad he got, no matter what he said, no matter what he broke. The old man would simply get this hollow, disappointed look in his eyes, and deflate a little…it was pathetic. _Hit me_, he wanted to say, _hit me and this whole stupid charade can be over between us_. There were times Seifer would actually wish that he would hit him. He didn't trust the reliability of things that didn't try to break him…he still didn't.

A blur cut across the courtyard, suddenly, the pound of running footsteps echoing in snowy crunches in the open air. A peach colored blur, blonde hair bobbing with every step.

_Trepe?_

He saw her barrel into one person, but kept going through the gates before the traditionally inept guard could stop her. He frowned, then glanced behind him, looking to see if a horde of ravenous Trepies was behind her. Nope.

_Then what the hell was she running from?_

"Not my problem," he muttered, folding his arms and staring up at the sky. It was a beautiful philosophy, apathy. Too bad it didn't work for shit around people like Trepe.

Well, **that** was about to change. He'd start his own religion. The monks of Ennui- all you'd really need was a flask of 100 proof whiskey and a hole in the ground. Easy enough.

He narrowed his eyes. In fact, why wait to leave? No one would notice if he went now. Balamb was as good a place as any to begin his quest to destroy his liver.

You promised Quistis you'd wait till Esthar…she asked you to. _A prickly sensation rose in his chest that felt suspiciously like a conscience._

Oh, _hell_ no. Not this guilt shit again.

_You didn't promise her anything._

_Fine. You owe it to her, then._

His conscience apparently had the argumentative skills of a three year old. No wonder he'd been able to ignore it so easily all these years.

_So what if I promised her?_Peoplemade promises all the time and broke them most of it. Nobody had ever made him any promises in his life except for his mother…and well, she'd sure as hell broken hers.

And then there it was again, that look in Trepe's eyes as she stood with her back pressed against the countertop, her gaze open and honest in a way he couldn't understand. No one had ever looked at him that way before. No one that knew him well enough to know that he was bad news, anyway.

_I believe in you. I have always believed in you._

No one ever said **that**, either.

Trepe was all kinds of exceptions to rules that had, until now, kept his life predictable.

_You mean rules that have kept your life a shithole._

"Shut up," he muttered.

Great. Now he was talking to himself.

He had been sitting out on one of the snowy benches, his coat collar flipped up to cover his neck, staring at the silent snowstorm for the past hour. Most everyone else had gone back inside in anticipation for the departure, but Seifer couldn't bring himself to. He let his mind wander. The snowfall was peaceful, silent. His mind set to wandering rather leisurely. He thought about the cold, Cid…._where had Trepe gone?_

He grimaced suddenly, rubbing at his arm. The damned thing was killing him- a constant throb set right in the middle of the knob of scar tissue, beating directly into his brain.

"Fucking arm." He muttered.

"_Hello, Seifer."_

He snapped his head around, but the Quad was empty. Marble walls and soft snow. And silence.

"Losing my _fucking_ mind." He muttered.

"_I've missed you…."_

Seifer ran his hands over his face. "You're hearing things." He whispered, fiercely.

"_Did you miss me too, my little one?_" He tried to breathe, but his breath was trapped in his chest, a bird beating to get out. He choked, grasping at his throat, but there was no air, only darkness and…a red curtain. He tried to focus…shadows were dancing there….Thin, dark shadows, whose eyes gleamed in the darkness like hot coals.…their sharp gaze sinking into him like knives.

**Get out of my head. Get ****out****…**

"_I've been waiting for you. _**We've**_ been waiting for you."_

"What the **fuck**?" he muttered. The empty echo bounced off the marble walls.

_You're dreaming, Almasy. Wake up. Wake the fuck up._

_A hand was reaching from behind the dark crimson curtain, dark and mangled, nails curved like claws._

"What do you want?"

"_Nothing much. __Just your pretty little heart_…."

**Gotcha**.

_His chest was burning, and he looked down. There was a gaping hole where his chest used to be, dark blood pouring out of the orifice like liquid shadow…._

"Attention all students and personnel This is Nida, SeeD id. 0167515." The blare of the com almost startled him off of the bench. He looked down to see that his hand was closed around Hyperion's handle and relaxed it, disgusted with himself. He glared up at one of the speakers. "Garden is scheduled to take off in approximately one hour. Prepare accordingly. Over and out." Another shriek tore through the com system, and Seifer winced. They really needed to get that fucking thing fixed.

Something warm and salty flowed between his teeth, and he spit in the snow only to find that he had bitten off a piece of his cheek somewhere between his idle contemplation and his self-created nightmare.

_Well, it's happened. You've lost it, Almasy. You've finally lost your fucking mind._

He shifted. It was beginning to get dark…he must have zoned out for longer than he'd thought. By the way his ass seemed to have frozen to the bench, it must have been quite awhile. And the pain in his arm….

**Gone**.

"Fucking nuts." He muttered, spitting another mouthful of blood into the snow.

Minutes passed. Seifer tapped his heel against the snow, carving ruts in the soft crust. How long had it been? Daylight was starting to fade. Must have been half an hour, then, at least. He was losing precious time by hanging around here, waiting for Trepe to come back...

If he was going, he should have left hours ago.

Stay or go. Stay or go. He rolled his eyes and swore as he got to his feet. Damnit. If he hadn't been so stubborn, he would have gone after her in the first place, and he wouldn't have frostbite on his ass.

Shoving himself to his feet, he angrily stalked out in the field, following the half-filled prints that Trepe had left behind. Balamb's relatively flat planes tapered down into a subtle valley dotted with trees. Tracking wasn't particularly difficult…it was a skill he had honed since childhood, chasing rabbits through the snowy cornfields. Squinting, Seifer noticed a wide, scattered press of snow. She'd fallen.

Seifer frowned, and increased his pace. How far could she have gone? He ducked under a few overhanging branches, swearing as one caught him in the eye, and stopped short at what he saw next.

A peach blur, barely visible through the falling snow. It was Trepe, sure enough. He approached her, slowly, not sure what to make of the way she was standing- hunched, her arms around herself. It was a posture he had never seen in her before. It was…deflated…defeated.

"Quistis?"

She stared past him, looking out into Balamb's icy fields. Her lips were blue.

She didn't answer him. Hair clung to her wet cheeks, freezing to her face in icy strands.

"Quistis-" he started.

"Have you ever danced with someone, Seifer?" she asked, staring out at the snow, not looking at him.

_The hell kind of a question was that?_

"Yeah…sure I have," he replied, his hands in his pockets.

She turned looked up at him, eyes empty and red. She'd been crying. "You know, I never have…we had to learn the steps for political functions…step on the plastic cut outs, learn the movements…but I've never danced with anyone, not really..."

He had no fucking idea what she was talking about. She may as well have been speaking the lost language of Esthar, as far as he was concerned.

She turned fully to look at him now, the wind blowing her hair in her eyes. "Seifer. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

_No. Yes. I don't know. Say something, Almasy. Fuck._

"Quistis-"

He looked away. "It's cold out."

"Is it?" She whispered, voice trembling almost as hard as her hands. She looked like a lost child. There was desperation in her voice…and something darker. Something that reminded him of Edea. An endless hunger, darkening the corners of her eyes into something simultaneously seductive and terrifying. A need.

He had never wanted her more than in that moment.

He had never hated her more than he had in that moment.

"Quistis, look…"

"Just…go in without me. I'll be fine." She smiled, sadly, and turned away from him. She was slipping…slipping into somewhere, and he had the strange notion if he lost her now he would never find her again.

"…then dance with me." He wasn't sure what made him say it. He would revisit that moment a thousand times in his mind and never know why he said it.

She turned around, and he looked down at her, eyes flickering as he silently offered his hand to her.

"Why?" It was almost a whisper. Her eyes narrowed. _Was he making fun of her?_

There were a million reasons why they shouldn't, why they couldn't, why the whole thing was stupid, but they all refused to leave his lips. "I don't know. Just dance with me."

She took his offered hand, her own sliding into warm leather as he pressed her closer, silently wrapping his arm around her waist. She slid her arm up his chest, affixing it gently at the broad expanse of collarbone that lingered beneath the tattered trench coat's collar. She closed her eyes as he moved, and her body followed the gentle sway of his own, tittered clumsily around every curve and sway until she was falling….falling into him. She almost laughed at herself, feeling silly, embarrassed, but soon, that feeling melted away, too, into something warm, and solid…something past even her own reproach.

After awhile, she could almost hear the music in her ears…the gentle lift of strings and the smooth, water-like grace of piano keys flow through her. Quiet, dark, and lulling. She could feel the swish of her skirt on the floor, feel the bright lights burn on her cheeks.

She lay her head against his chest, listening to the gentle hammer of his heart become harder with every twist and turn of his graceful stride. He was a beautiful dancer. She'd known he would be- she'd seen the poise in his hands and his motion when he fought, a graceful ballad of muscle and steel rehearsed in silent rooms. Fighting, dancing…was it really so different? His grace had always been overshadowed by his arrogance…but not now. Now his limbs held only their former polish, and his eyes an eroded beauty that held not haughtiness, but a fear she could taste- a fear that hammered in her own chest.

Forward, side, back, legs and hips twisted to a silent melody he kept in his head. She thought to wonder why he had asked, thought to wonder why it was that he had followed her out there, but then she found that she did not much care for an answer.

_She closed her eyes and imagined the light of the chandelier, the sweet swell of music from the marble stage… __  
_

He was holding her too close, and she was holding him back too tight, and he stared with opened eyes at the snowy scenery in front of them, willing himself to quell the emotions that were quickly rising in his chest like fire. He closed his eyes as he settled his cheek against her hair, drinking in the scent. She pressed herself to him, desperately, and she was cold, so cold, but warming fast…

_Warmth and music flowing around him, the cheerful chatter of the crowd and the lilting crescendo of the strings…_

It wasn't right…but then, nothing in his life had ever been right. Always things he shouldn't do, shouldn't think…and here, he was thinking and doing all of them…

Every gentle turn, every caress of their feet against the snowy ground beneath them became a possibility, became a someday and a maybe and a prospect…every hammer of his heart against her cheek and every sweet breath that brushed her ear was a foolish what-if.

And all at once, he stopped. He turned his head, breath harsh against the cold winter air. They had to stop. Her body was pressed against him, hips and belly and breasts crushed against him, and maybe they had gone too far to stop now-

_You can't._She opened her eyes to stare at the serene shadows from the trees that blanketed the white snow, the sway of their gloom against the pallid coating. She raised her head, pressed her cheek against his neck, squeezing her eyes shut at the warmth that lingered there. Her tears were dried now, sadness sinking in favor of the heat that twisted in her hips and flared outward. She could feel it, the small thrill running through her like a sparkle of electric current bubbling against her skin and hammering in her heart. He was motionless against her, breathing heavy, his body tense and still and wonderfully hard-

She could lean on that strength for a moment, press into it and have it press back into her, and that would be enough. It had to be…because it was all there was left in her to feel-

And then he moved again.

_Back, two, three, side, two, three…_

Seifer's eyes stared at the field beyond them as he turned, eyes haunted as he gently swayed the fragile form in his arms. Her body flowed easily against his, pressing bonelessly against him as naïve and trusting as any child, but the curves that pushed against him were anything but child-like. This had to stop.

_I can't stop. _

The tension, the resistance of the past few months was crumbling, and he wasn't thinking about a sorceress, or a field, or a dirty hotel room, he was thinking of the distance between them, and how easily he could close it, how easily it would be to open her up and slide in and let two years of hell pour out of him, pour into her arms and her lips and her soft skin.

He felt her cheek against his neck, felt the warmth and the wetness of her eyes squeezed shut against him, and his feet slowed to a stop again. Snowflakes had caught in her hair, twinkling like diamonds in the clear moonlight. Maybe they were decent people with decent pasts, just dancing in the snow. Maybe they were together in some fucking fairy tale, and everything was perfect.

_Pretend_.

A million words bubbled up in his chest, but none of them broke his lips, just swam around in his eyes and hammered in his heart, unsteady, like a child's first step forward. Nothing could have prepared him for the next moment, when she kissed him, her lower lip soft and cold as it brushed across his. Her eyes were closed, and he blinked down at her, astonished.

**Finally.**

It nearly sent him reeling backwards into the snow, that brief contact. It was chaste, and if he thought about it, rather inexperienced, but some current struck through him, piercing him and making logical thought about what she had just done impossible.

She pulled back suddenly, cheeks pink and breath uneven.

His face was impassive as he stared at her.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, turning away, pulling out of his grip.

Her cheeks were burning, eyes averted in humiliation. She would walk back to her bedroom, back to her cold bed and back to every dead and shallow dream she'd tacked to her calendar. And there, the thoughts waited- thoughts of her memories, freshly exposed, of the childhood that had broken and buried like shadow shards in the snow of her heart, not seen, but keenly felt with each beat. Thoughts of Cid, of a tasteless, colorless future that balanced on battles and missions and empty beds.

She hesitated as she turned her back to him. "I shouldn't have-"

He spun her around, cutting her sentence short.

His eyes were dark, and he tilted her head up to see the light swimming on her face and lighting her eyes. There was snow in her hair, snow in her lashes, snow melting on her lips, and he crushed her to him, his mouth on hers, his hand on the back of her neck, hard, and his other hand at her waist, grasping beneath the coat.

He heard her intake of breath, and then there was only her lips, cold and soft. It was a brief kiss, like the one she had given him, testing the waters before drawing back. She didn't run, so he bent his head, lips brushing her cheek. Electricity trailed along that current of contact, a sharp sting of pleasure. Her breath was uneven. He ducked his head and caught her lips again, harder this time, easing her mouth open. Warm in her mouth, salt from her tears and the sweet, unique taste of her.

She tensed as he deepened the kiss, but gave into it almost instnatly, her fingers tightening around his shoulders and her lips moving against his own. He took a step forward, forcing her to back up. She could feel the cold, stiff outline of his coat, and pushed the flaps aside, slipping her hands underneath his shirt. He was warm underneath, and his muscles tensed under her touch, both from the cold and from the contact. Hard, hot muscle, and she wanted to crawl inside him, to rest against the rock-solid warmth of his skin. She slid her hands up, slowly, and when he broke away to hiss, she offered up her mouth, moaning a little as he took her bottom lip between his teeth and bit down hard.

And it was…

…_.no words…._

He closed his eyes, and tightened his arms around her, lust hot and bright, tingling on his lips and pooling much lower. He pulled back a fraction, tracing his thumb against her lips. Wet. Still cold. His breath was heavy. She drew back a little, studying him.

"Seifer," she said, quietly. "Just…"

Her voice trailed off, and neither knew what she was going to say. He narrowed his eyes a fraction, and jerked her head back for another kiss. This one was unlike those previous…this one was hot, and demanding, teeth searing the edge of her lips again. She slid her hands from his shirt and tangled greedy fingers in his hair, draping her other arm up to curl around his neck. She made some sweet sound in the back of throat and stood on tiptoe, leaning her weight against him and pulling him down to her level.

He almost lurched back a step as her weight grew less passive against him, but he quickly recovered, leaning forward and hooking her leg around his waist, easing her down into the snow. Needing all at once to feel her skin against his he ripped off his gloves, pressing his palms against her cheeks as he tilted her head to a more accommodating angle, pulling her clip from her hair and throwing it across the field, plunging his hands into her hair as she gasped against his lips. The clip fell next to the crumpled leather skeletons of his gloves, unnoticed. She tilted her head up and he bit at her shoulder, running his hands along her sides.

Her skin was cold and soft beneath his fingers. She looked up at him from the snowbed, her eyes flickering, lips slightly parted and he was pierced by that image, struck from balls to brain and he had to stop-

-there was no way to stop-

Memories skittered across her mind at the contact of his hands in her hair, but they vanished, quickly, in the tender feel of his fingers now gentle against her neck, his lips soon replacing them. His breath was warm, erratic, deep breaths from his mouth shuddering against her skin, the dark rasp of his voice edging in each gasp for air. She realized, instantly, that there was no half-way with Seifer- there was all or there was nothing.

Tantalizingly enough, it was she who deepened the kiss this time, lips parting just slightly to take him in, tongue darting against his lips. And he was lost, lost in her like the ocean, in the cascade of her hair now flowing through his fingers and her lips drawing him in delicious, warm crests. He dipped his lips to her shoulder, encouraged at the way she tilted her head to the side to allow him better access and intrigued by the way her breath hitched in her throat when he bit at her neck. He ground his hips hard into her and she tilted back her head, gasping.

He wanted to see her fall apart.

Her fingers draped along his shoulders, reaching to push his coat down, a move in which he willingly assisted. The material fell to the ground, gone, discarded, the air cold on his skin as her hand bunched in the white t-shirt beneath, pulling him forward for another kiss. There was no snow and no field, there was her and there was the moment and the momentum, and he wanted her so badly…

He shouldn't be doing this. Not like this when she was tired and wounded and coming to him for warmth. But she was just so…

"Quistis…" he shuddered. "…I can't..."

She looked him in the eye, her expression steady, her voice a whisper.

"Kiss me again."

He did, stifling a moan as she ran her hands up his chest, cold palms against his skin again, fingertips burning sensation into the once-dead flesh-

He **felt** this. He felt **something**.

_Stop. Stop now and be a good man. Stop now and walk away._

She never broke eye contact with him, eyes sinking into his, flushing his insides with fire as she dug her hands into his vest and ran them down…down…

D_own_.

He sucked in a breath and swore. The battle to be a good man was over.

He snarled and bent over, his weight on top as he ran his hands down her sides, never breaking contact with her lips. His mind buzzed, the taste of lust bright and metallic in his mouth as he gripped her hips, pulling her up to press against him. Her legs were on either side of him, all muscle and insistence. He reached down-

-the skirt ripped-

She did not fight his hungry fingers at her waist, but instead leaned into them, letting them inch the skirt up past her hips and sink into the soft flesh of her thighs, fierce and fast and steady. The cold air whipped at her legs, heightening the sensation in to a mix of cold and heat. She drew her hands down to his waist but found them snatched and pinned above her head, the move knocking a breath loose from her.

He drew his hands over her, crushed his palms against her breasts and kissed her neck. It wasn't gentle, or graceful, it was heated and base and quick, and she sensed then that he had completely lost control of himself, in as much as she could think beyond the pull of her own body-

Her nails were in his arms, and she was arching herself up against him, eyes shut as a low moan escaped his lips. He hissed, and all at once, he turned his head into her neck, his tongue and his teeth at her-

The calloused skin of his hands running the length of her body…over and under the buttons of her coat, the zipper of her blouse, and then his fingers against her thighs, pushing her underwear aside-

_His eyes were beautiful in the snow's harsh glare, eyes narrowed as he arched over her, panting. His gaze was lustful…cautious. Raw._

_He'll hurt you…._

She closed her eyes.

_What could there be left to hurt?_

She tore her hands free of his grasp, grabbing his belt buckle and jerking the leather thong from the metal clasp, a something unnamable rushing in her system at the sound of the curse that broke his lips. He pushed her hands away and trailed his lips across her collarbone, breath warm against her chest even as the air raised gooseflesh along her skin. His shirt rode up just slightly, and his skin, hot against hers, chased the numbing cold away. He pressed her down into the snow, his lips against hers now with a bruising intensity that mirrored the dig of her heels in the small of his back.

Hands gripped, tore. His hands danced across her breasts, snaking down to her waist lifting her hips against him as his mouth traveled across her neck once more, kisses sharp and drugging, his teeth skimming her skin in razor sharp sweeps of sensation.

She considered him against the soft backlight of the snow. He looked like Adonis, an image of the moonlit god catching in his emerald eyes and holding fast, cold. Steady, sure, not like the tremors that raced across her body lying bare, opened, pinned down by his body against hers and her skin offered up in sacrifice to his senses and her own.

She closed her eyes, tilting her head back into the soft, cold blanket of snow as his hands danced over her skin, roamed, stroking the flat plane of her stomach and sliding lower, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of her underwear again to curve into the warmth beneath. She hissed, fingers tangling in the short hair at the nape of his neck. His eyes fastened on hers in an instant, and then his mouth was on her neck, teeth skimming her throat as his hands grasped hers, pushing them deeper into the snow.

He whispered shadows on her skin, legs intertwining with his and crushing him down against her. She jerked him down, pressing her hand hard into the hollow of his hip, begging and pleading wordlessly against the skin of his neck for something, anything…for everything he could give her.

Bittersweet surrender.

He did not resist, but followed her request, hips jerking in a savage motion as he bit at her neck to muffle his own cry, and she closed her eyes, arching against the savage hurt and the nearly unbearable sensation of being filled to the core with foreign, hard heat.

A brief pain, like her body was torn open to her heart, a throbbing, burning pain that blossomed out held her muscles taught. She opened her eyes to stare at the expanse of sky above her, the light swimming in the moisture in her eyes as she gasped for air. Her hands grappled at his shoulders, squeezing aimlessly, her nails raking down his back through the cold, worn dragonskin. It was a strange beauty, this pain, distant and altogether too close.

He didn't stop, and she didn't ask him to. She brought his head down and kissed him- she could feel everything, the stubble on his cheeks, the cold scrape of his belt buckle against her thigh, his breath against her lips, and his control, completely gone-

She clutched at his shoulders, arching back hard against the ground as another wave swept through her, but this time it was different, a spike of something piercing up and relaxing the muscles of her legs. Her breath caught in her throat, hitching hard as he drove her back, forehead pressed against her shoulder, a feral grunt escaping his lips. And suddenly, she couldn't feel the cold, or the pain. For the first time in her life that she could remember, she didn't think, but _felt_.

And Hyne, he was going to explode, shatter here above her. Her body was the moon, the waves of his body commanded beneath her….the smell of her hair and the feel of her, cold and hot and-

-he whispered her name as he came undone, clutching at her, and for a moment, she believed it was the only word in the world that existed…that his voice was the only sound that mattered.

The weight of his hips sinking into hers, weight lax on top of her as he caught his breath. The strange, distant gleam in his eyes, lit in the faint light of the moon, his hands, tender now, on her face, cradling her….she closed her eyes and pretended it was forever…

...that forever could exist for people like them.

Seifer Almasy's conscience, an entity that he had sworn had deserted him at the age of five, had returned in full force in the shadows of 3am to make up for seventeen years of neglect. The sheets were draped haphazardly across his waist, dipping across his hips to trail over the side of the bed. He ran a hand through his hair, and swore.

_He was collapsed on top of her, trying to catch his breath, feeling for the first time the cold press of snowflakes on his exposed skin. He had wanted to ask her if it had been any good, if it could have been anyone out there in the snow, if there had been anyone, and a thousand other questions that didn't make any sense to ask. _

_They'd just fucked like animals out in the open, and he wanted to ask if she was all right, if it had been…hell, she'd wanted it too, hadn't she? _

_Instead, they got to their feet, unsteady, him buckling his belt and her trying without success to put her torn skirt to rights. Without a word, they'd walked back- he saw her shiver and pulled off his coat, draping it around her. She'd accepted the offer silently, looking over at him with an unreadable look in her eyes as she pulled the jacket around her._

_Did she regret it?_

_He followed her to her room, and still she said nothing, he'd followed her inside and still there was that uncomfortable silence, both of them looking everywhere but at each other. He turned to leave, and-_

"_Stay the night." She said, quietly, her hand holding his coat closed around her._

"_You…don't want me to stay the night." He replied._

_She was inches away from him. The cold had set a deep rose in her cheeks, and her lips were swollen from kissing._

_Beautiful._

"_I don't want to be alone." She said quietly._

_His groin coiled at the look in her eyes. "You know I can't…I shouldn't…this…" he said, though his teeth. _

_Whatever this is…it can't last._

_Her sad smile almost undid him for the second time that night. "I know." She said, softly. Shedding his coat, and the rest of her clothing she walked towards the shower, wearing only the moonlight on her skin._

_He stood, mesmerized, his mind kicking him in the ass to leave but the rest of him too captivated to listen._

_He took a step closer. "I have to go."_

_She didn't respond as she opened the bathroom door. She was probably going in there to wash him off…to close her eyes under the water and forget it ever happened._

_He closed the distance between them in two long strides._

_They __stumbled into the shower, and he barely got the door closed in time as the hot water sprayed down in a hard arc and she turned to him, stepping into his arms as if she had done it a million times before. He held her, quietly at first, the warm water pouring down on his back like a heartbeat as he felt her own stutter its rhythm into his own chest. She became him, then, lips and tongues and hands becoming a single being turned inward on itself, a coil of pain and memory made whole again in its union._

_He shut his eyes against the pain that boiled up to the surface, the way the memories invaded the pores of his skin and fed into hers in the shivering muscles and the whispered promises that filled the small glass shower. She was looking into his eyes, the blue, pure irises absorbing him like some ethereal sponge, some porous angel with room enough for his darkness and strength enough to destroy it. Touching him, wanting him…it was like an act of forgiveness._

_How could she look at him that way? As if he were……whole?_

He kissed her again, and lost himself. His world became no more than her skin and the sound of her voice as it lifted him from the wretched, soiled corpse that was once his soul, lifted him into her arms and into her body and Hyne, what the hell was this feeling, being taken into her mouth and into her body and into her heart, like being enveloped in a whisper, an echo that wound itself around him, stretching warm fingers into his past and into his future, connecting the disjointed ends of what he was and what he could become-

He had never been whole before.

_And yet it was all there, in her arms, in the subtle scent that hid between her shoulder and her neck, the inviting scent of innocence and lust and it was __**his**__ name on her lips, as if the word could be beautiful and whole with him in it, each wave and crest of his name on her lips an ocean of possibility- of what could be, of what he could be, what was possible-_

_They lay in bed afterwards, twisted up in the sheets, fingers running idly along fevered skin. She traced the outline of the tattoo, the one he'd gotten so foolishly so that he would never forget his destiny. After the war, drunk, he'd tried to scrape it off with an old razor blade, and been less than successful. The black ink (now intermixed with scar tissue), still marred his skin, a constant reminder that was as tattered as he felt, most days. Her fingers slid down to his hands, tracing the pink lines that cut across his palms. He held his breath._

"_Why?" She rolled onto her side, the covers tucked prudently under her arms. Her eyes were warm, but cautious…a reluctant blue fire._

"_Why what?" he asked, running his hand over her hip._

"_Why did you ask me to dance?"_

"…_I don't know," he replied honestly._

_She frowned, but her eyes were already far away. Silence stretched between them, and he was almost startled when she spoke._

"_When I was a child…when I lived with my foster…parents…" she spit the last word out reluctantly, as if it tasted badly. "They were always going to political functions, to fancy balls and dinner parties. Political wastelands with fine china and all the proper courtesies. You would have hated it. All the politicians were dressed up like kings and queens from dead eras of honor and fellowship to parade politics…" Her face twisted in a bitter scowl, but the expression faded quickly. 'Those were my favorite times, before the parties. She could sit up in her room all day with curlers in her hair and a perfume spritzer at her side, and there would be this excited hush around the house…he would come and take her in their silver car. They were like a king and queen. They were a fairy tale." _

_She traced the pillow lining, studying the bedsheet as she continued to speak. "I was allowed to go, once, and I remember I felt just like a princess. It was…it was the only time in my life that I've ever felt…you know."_

"_What?"_

"_Beautiful."_

_He wanted to tell her how ridiculous that was, but she spoke up too quickly. "That night was something out of a book. I remember everything perfectly. She was wearing a long velvet dress, bright red, and he was wearing a black suit. The chandeliers were the biggest lights I'd ever seen, bigger than the stars we used to watch with Matron. They moved perfectly together, every sway and inch in sync, every smile and sway perfectly timed and they just…they just seemed to float on the floor. And I thought, I thought…that must be what love was. I thought, that someday, if someone danced with me just like that, then I could be happy forever."_

"_And was it like you thought?" _

_She raised a questioning eyebrow at him. _

_He rolled onto his back. "Dancing…" he asked the ceiling, too afraid to look her in the eyes, "Was it like you thought it would be?"_

"_It was…" she paused, "It was exactly how I thought it would be."_

_He glanced at her, and she was still staring at the ceiling, but there was a hint of a small smile on her lips._

_The idea that he had the ability to make Quistis Trepe happy was an idea that seemed foreign to him. He hadn't really made anyone happy before, aside from maybe his mother. Most of the people in his life had either turned their backs to him, or had turned _**on**_ him…_

_But all of that…it didn't seem important now. She was here and touching him, smiling, and he felt at peace and he didn't want to ruin it. It was as if he breathed, her touch would be gone, like the memory of butterfly wings._

_She took his hand again, and quietly, traced his palm, following the pink scar lines with the pad of her thumb. Amazing, that a woman who looked so hard in battle could have such a soft touch._

"_What happened?" she asked. Strange to hear her voice this way, gentle and without the defensive points it usually carried._

_He closed his hand around hers, lacing their fingers together. He stared at their joined hands a moment, running his thumb over her knuckles. "I did it, after the war. After Time Compression…with my sword."_

"_Why?"_

"_Wanted to see if I could still feel, I guess."_

_She smiled, sadly. "And did you?"_

_He didn't answer for a long time, and eventually released her hand. She slid her palm over his shoulder, and inching closer, slid her leg to wedge between both of his, sighing against his neck. Silence passed between them for a long time, and he was left with the nagging of his conscience and the mechanical hum of her bedside clock._

"I do…now," he whispered.

No answer.

"Quistis?"

Deep sighs were his answer. He angled onto his back and dragged her with him, cheek pressed securely against his chest and her breath warm as it fanned across his skin. She was deep asleep. He smiled, bitterly, and traced the line of her cheek with his thumb before burying his face in her hair…the scent of her washing him over like a wave of peace.

The sound of their breath and the sweet gasp of silence filled the room, and long after her heartbeat had settled into a slow, even rhythm, he watched her sleep.

_I dreamed of you,_ he thought, staring at the curtain of her hair as it rippled quietly along the curve of the pillow. _I've dreamed of you so long I almost forgot that you existed. _

It wasn't her face then, all those years ago, but it was the idea of someone like her he saw in the light on the blade and the burning in his belly- bright, youthful, stupid hope. It was her in the sunlight that stretched across that endless ocean he dreamed for himself. It was her, there, next to him, all those nights, when hope burned in him like whisky…there in the shadows of the card table when life and trust and perhaps everything that was ever good in him seeped out onto the cold linoleum…

She was glory.

She was hope.

There in the snow, there had only been the two of them- there had been no sorceress in his skull, tainting the present- no failures, no fleeting memories knocking around in his head. Here, now, his demons were dreaming and his past was silent- all because of her, of this simple thing? All his life, he had been the exception to every happy rule and station in life…and now found himself longing for those places he had long abhorred.

He closed his eyes, sighing in the dark. _He saw the house by the ocean, again, saw her barefoot in the sand, hair tangled in the breeze…_

He wasn't a good enough man. He knew that. But he could pretend right now, couldn't he? Just this once…

_He saw her beside him on the squeaky porch swing, her head nestled on his shoulder as the sun dipped down below the horizon…_

Just for tonight, he'd hold these dreams and pretend they were his. Tonight, she'd be his.

_Pretend_, he thought, lacing his arm between her arm and side to snake around her, pulling her closer.

…

…

…

He awoke, slowly, surprised to find no aftertaste of terror lingering on his lips, but instead, a feeling of well-restedness, a milky, almost satin comfort resting behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes and immediately knew why.

Quistis.

She had curled one arm up beneath her head, hair spread out like a curtain of silk that caught the light, drank it in until the gold became almost too much to look at. Her other hand lay next to her face, fingers fisted like a child, dreaming, he hoped, something pleasant. She would always be innocent, this part of her, the part that had once ran through fields ahead of him and danced under the stars, cupping fireflies in her hands. The girl that had colored rocks and believed in him.

That girl that had survived, somehow, and continued to believe in him.

She breathed softly, sweetly, the breath of her hair stirring a vagrant strand that fell down to crease between her brows. Tentatively, he reached up, tucking the errand strand behind her ear, careful not to stir her in the process.

How could a feeling feel…this certain? As if it ran through forever, sure, confident, not waiting to be doubted but running like a current of fire through his heart…

He had never wanted to stay the night before. There were always expectations in the morning, and an uncomfortable silence as clothes were pulled on and goodbyes were muttered. After the sweat was spent, after his heartbeat returned and the distant roar faded from his ears, there had never been anything left but skin and empty promises.

And what was this stupid feeling? Like he wanted to take her out for breakfast, and watch her eat runny eggs. Like he wanted to watch her wake up.

Like he wanted to stay.

He still didn't understand it, how what once in the physical sense united them still strung him to her, a warm, insistent pull that affected his entire body. This _thing_……had stayed. For once in his life, he awoke not feeling dirty, soiled by his existence and the presence next to him. He felt almost…_new_.

This **feeling…**had stayed, too.

And so had she, her head tucked in the curve of his shoulder, her breath sweet against his cheek and her hair spilled around him like liquid sunshine. She tangled herself up in him, abandoning the covers completely at the end of the bed. Her skin was soft, warm, her breath was short and even against his neck. Her cheek was compressed on the pillow, hair messed in sleep, her fists balled up along his shoulder.

Beautiful.

**Mine**.

His body spoke the word before his mind could approve of it, muscles tensing slightly at the thought as he drew her closer to him, eyes narrowing in the early shades of dawn, arm coiled around her like a dragon guarding his gold.

_Mine_.

But was she?

Last night, he'd come undone, lost himself in her and somehow she was still in him, little pieces that made his heart beat a little faster when he thought of her. Pieces that made him complete, that didn't make him itch or regret.

A corny thought, one he would have kicked his own ass for in recent years. But it made sense, somehow, as if when she was around, breathing got just a little easier. The shamed mantle around his shoulders hadn't felt so heavy in her presence. She was…a reprieve, from himself.

His mind swam with possibilities. He wanted to take her to the Trabian mountains, and show her how the world could explode into morning so hard it was like an orange orgasm…wanted to show her the hidden alleys in Esthar, and how they ran along the paths of some of the most interesting, strange people in the world. She'd get a kick out of Suri. He knew a restaurant near Balamb Harbor. It had a fantastic seafood restaurant- the hard-shell crab legs would frustrate the hell of her. They could stay overnight in the hotel by the sea, and he could show her things about herself, things that weren't terrible, things that weren't taken but shared…

The thoughts stopped him in cold realization. He wanted today with this woman. And tomorrow. And every day after.

_When the __hell__ had __**this**__ happened?_

She was a goddess, an eternal angel preserved in the morning in the same state as the darkness had glorified her. In bed, beside him, the creamy hues of her skin caught the sunlight like pale gold, her hair fanned out behind her like bolts of silk in the sunlight. She was tough, and charming, and intelligent, and challenging. She was stubborn as hell and soft like heaven. An angel.

An angel that threatened to wake at any moment.

And what then?

_Yes, Almasy, what the fuck then?_

_You're so great with words…what are you going to tell her? That you want her to come with you? Be with you? What can you possibly offer her? _

_I could protect her._

_Yeah, right…like you protected Rinoa? Edea? _

_Who's going to protect her from _**you**_?_

He pulled away from her, sighing as he rolled onto his back. He couldn't stay, couldn't stand to see the look in her eyes when she realized what she had done…….and with whom.

He'd ruined her.

…and yet, she'd come back to him. She'd asked him to stay. Did it mean she didn't think it wasn't a mistake, either?

He knew that if he let his guard down for a single moment more, he would start believing. He would believe that the house by the ocean could be real, that it could be possible, and what right had he to dream these things?

None. None at all.

He'd had no fucking right to touch her, he knew that. She was so far above him; it hurt his neck to look at her. But damned if she hadn't kissed him first.

Quistis Trepe, coming undone beneath him. Balamb's sunsets weren't nearly that beautiful.

She stirred, but only slightly, breathing a sweet sigh as the sheet slid to expose a milky collarbone, shaded by the window light.

She'd rested so trustingly in his hands, a butterfly with velvet wings like crepe paper. They beat so softly, those wings, her heartbeat in his hand... And he'd crushed her-

…and it had been… amazing…

He'd slept with dozens of women. They'd come to him, he'd gone to them…but he had never chased one before, never cared enough to pursue…he had been too proud, even for Rinoa. In the end, all Rinoa had been was an heirloom, a trophy…just another shining token that had fallen into Squall's undeserving hands. No, Seifer Almasy did not chase anyone. But this woman….

What he had sought in a sorceress, searched for in the dim alleyways of Esthar and pursued in the halls of B.Garden he could have found in the simple heart of an ex-Instructor.

He curled his hand under his head, staring at her, eyes narrowing in the darkness.

All his dreams died…why should this one be any different?

She would crush **him**…destroy **him**…like the others that had possessed him…_he saw once again flashing yellow eyes, disgusted lips. _

"_**Worthless**__ child. You disgust me."_

"_**Boy**__…"_

"_Seifer Almasy…__**failed**__…"_

"_**Lapdog**__…"_

He shut his eyes. She would take off those rose-colored glasses eventually, and see him the way the rest of the world saw him- as a fallen monster, lower than rats and a thousand times more contemptible. And when she did, if she looked at him the way she did, the way they did-

It would crush the last ounce of pride that kept his spine straight. He could fail the world, had failed it. But fail her?

_No_.

Seifer Almasy wasn't meant to be with anyone…especially not someone like Quistis Trepe.

He turned softly in the sheets, rolling and touching down with a feather light form perfected as a child sneaking past a drunk father.

He'd run all his life, it seemed.

He pulled on his clothes, silently, never taking his eyes off of her. To make sure she wasn't awake, he told himself, but the truth was, every beam of sunlight seemed intent on patterning her skin in a golden glow, one he wanted to explore, examine, trace the light and shadow until she gasped his name again…

He paused. He wanted to remember her.

He ripped his eyes away, walked to the door when every thread and fiber in his chest was calling him back to her, back to the bed and her arms and-

The door shut behind him, and a breath he wasn't aware that he was holding let out in a great gasp.

That's it, Almasy. Get your bag. Get out of here. Leave her with a memory…because if she ever figures out the reality she'll realize you're just a used up dreamer, not even close to that fucking prince charming she's been dreaming up in that stupid dream of hers…

It was better this way. If he didn't leave now…

"Almasy." The voice was flat, the only voice that seemed to be able to turn his name itself into a derogatory statement. He brought his eyes up to meet just the person he didn't want to run into at this particular door. Not for the first time, Seifer mused over the idea that if there was such a thing as Fate, it was an entity that hated him.

_Shit_.

He turned.

"Xu."

A/N: If you have time, reviews are like candy!


	30. Ashes Ashes

Thanks go to: Kari and LostWitness, for hosting me, Peppyrmnt, who one of these days is going to be BRUTAL, Kynos, for his mechanical help (and his corruption), and to those on the Seiftis Message Board who have graciously put up with my questions. Thanks also to all my MSN and AIM buddies- you guys are an inspiration….thanks!

Disclaimer: (i.e. stuff that isn't mine): Pretty much all the characters and places aren't mine, although I accept full blame for the plot, Arya, Brek, Serabin, and Cerberus. Also, Seifer's 'hand on my ass' reference belongs to the movie Spygame, not me.

Recommended listening: Lord of the Rings's version of 'Requiem for a Dream', FF8's opening sequence, The Rock Soundtrack's main theme, and basically anything with 'hard' instrumentals. Also perfect is a song that Kari kindly recommended to me, Natalie Merchant's 'My Skin'. Thanks, Kari! Also, anything by ES Posthumous- a new favorite group of mine, thanks to my livejournal buddies!

"Take a look at my body  
Look at my hands  
There's so much here that I don't understand  
Your face say these promises  
Whispered like prayers  
I don't need them

Because I've been treated so wrong  
I've been treated so long  
As if I'm becoming untouchable  
Well, content loves the silence  
It thrives in the dark  
With fine winding tendrils  
That strangle the heart

They say that promises sweeten the blow  
But I don't need them, no  
I don't need them  
I've been treated so wrong  
I've been treated so long  
As if I'm becoming untouchable  
I'm the slow dying flower  
In the frost killing hour  
Sweet turning sour and untouchable  
   
Well is it dark enough  
Can you see me  
Do you want me  
Can you reach me  
Oh, I'm leaving  
You better shut your mouth  
And hold your breath  
And kiss me now  
And catch your death  
Oh, I mean this…  
Oh, I mean this…"

-Natalie Merchant, "My Skin"

Chapter 2- Ashes, Ashes

"You got the coffee?"

"Yup. Two creams, two sugars for you, Gorge, and black for you, Crevy."

"I swear, this is the easiest job in the world." Said one of the men, grinning as he stared out of the window at Esthar's version of daybreak.

"Like gettin' paid for watching paint dry," added his coworker, plopping into one of the leather-backed swivel chairs that decorated Esthar's Office of Security. "Shield one, outer perimeter down."

"Confirmed." Replied the tower officer, setting down his coffee to pick up a pair of headphones and hitting a button. "SeeD, are your squadrons in?"

The radio blinked on as three com devices activated. "Glyphias, Squadron B in and in position."

"Tilmitt, Squadron C in. Destination to position, five minutes and counting."

"This is Commander Leonhart, Squadron A. Squadron A is in position. We'll have the problem taken care of before the streets open. Over and out."

The control tower operative glanced over at his comrade. "Damn, they're fast."

"President Loire didn't hire SeeD just 'cause his son's commander, you know." Replied the commander, leaning back in his chair after hitting a few switches. "SeeD's the real deal. 'Sides, I heard Loire got a discount on the normal contract fee 'cause Leonhart's breaking in the new prospective cadets."

"So, what do we do now?" asked the younger of the three, whose i.d. was marked TRAINEE and whose perpetual duty seemed to be to fetch coffee.

"Now," replied the tower operative, "we wait for Squads B and C to announce that they've eradicated our little pest problem, and, if necessary, open up the shield perimeter one more time in case they drive any out to Squad A."

The trainee sat back in his own chair, looking thoughtful. "Seems kinda odd to me, Esthar havin' a pest problem when we've got the world's most expensive security system hangin' over our heads 24-7."

"Not so strange," replied his superior, taking a sip of coffee. "Esthar imports a large majority of its food products- larvae could sneak in that way and get trapped in the grid.  'Sides, ever since the Lunar Cry, we've been having a bit of trouble in our sewer systems. 'Sides, a shield system like this,  what do you expect? Can't nothing get _in_, so it would logically follow that can't nothing get _out_."

"Awful lot of monsters for shipping stowaways and Lunar Cry leftovers." Said the trainee.

"What are you getting at, boy?" asked the superior, irritated. "Darwin Drosskow designed this system. Are you saying the shield is flawed?"

The trainee shrugged. "Just sayin' the specs on the monsters shows an awful lot of 'em, is all."

The older man rolled his eyes. "You trainees and your theories. Look, the only way the system could fail is if you or I fuck it up. Are you sayin' somebody up **here** made a mistake?"

The trainee put up his hands defensively. "I ain't sayin' that. All I'm sayin' is, that's a lotta monsters, all right? Why ya gotta read into everything, boss?"

"Damn kids," muttered the supervisor. "You and your questions. What if the systems fails? What if the system fails? Look, it hasn't failed for-"

"Geez-"

"Let me finish! You have to look at empirical evidence here. We've-"

The trainee was five shades past exasperated. "All right! All right! Geez! Bite my friggin' head off! All's I was sayin' was-"

"Well don't say so damned much!" snapped the officer. "From now on I want more coffee from you, Jamison, and less opinions."

"Y-yessir." Replied the trainee, before quickly heading back towards the break room, mouthing silent insults.

"Awful hard on the new ones, aren't ya, Gorge?" asked the other tower operative, setting down his headphones and chuckling.

"Something about that one gets on my nerves." The older man shrugged. "Maybe I just can't take all the theoreticals. Trust in the technology, I say."

"Hm. I don't think Loire does, since they started associating Drosskow with the IGCS mess."

"What makes you say that?"

The tower operator shrugged his big shoulders, tapping his pen against a grid screen. "Had monsters messin' around the sewers for years since the Second Sorceress war. So, why now? Why SeeD?"

Silence followed as the two men documented shield percentages on the 18 generators around the city, checking each one off of a security report sheet for the specific day.

"Hm. Generator 9's at 76…."

Gorge shrugged. "We'll send in the night team to clean it out. They _all_ need a little cleaning, you ask me, but Loire's so stingy with the budget lately…" The older man erased a calculation, then took a long sip of coffee. "Two creams my ass. Hey Crevy, who ya got picked for tonight's Kri-ball match?"

"The Trabia Thrustaevi, hands down. Gonna be a slaughter."

Gorge looked up at that. "You'd betray your own Esthar Elvorets? You're a disgrace."

"No my friend, _they're_ the disgrace. Did you see what they did against the Grats last season? Last firgli-5 seconds, high pass to the Sni, completely wide. Threw the game."

Gorge slammed his somewhat meaty fist onto the counter. "I tell you, those refs were paid."

"Those refs didn't need money to see that team was playing like a buncha drunk Funguars-"

The head supervisor's face was now red. "I'll have **you** know that-"

A flurry of alarms effectively droned out the older man's surely epic speech on the merits of Elvoret Kri-ball. Startled, both men looked down at the controls, where a flurry of lights was now appearing to signal either imminent doom or a winning lottery number.

"The fuck?" uttered Gorge, staring at the screen in front of him.

**SHIELD ONE STATUS: DOWN.**

**SHIELD TWO STATUS: DOWN. **

"Uh…what do we do?" asked Crevy.

Gorge blanched. "Well, this…hasn't ever happened before…"

The tower supervisor quickly activated a few controls, experience making his hands work more quickly than his partner could follow. "The Back-up system should kick in-"

Both men leaned forward, the seconds ticking away like hours as they anxiously awaited confirmation.

SHIELD BACK-UP STATUS: ………. **FAILED**

Gorge leaned in, his hands a blur on the keyboard as Crevy attempted to access the backup generator once more.  The trainee rushed in, his eyes wide. "What's going on?"

"Get maintenance down here, and get them down to the generator!" shouted Gorge.

SHIELD BACK-UP STATUS:……**FAILED**

"Well, shit," exclaimed Crevy. "What now?"

"SeeD teams aren't responding, either. Now," said Gorge, picking up the telephone, sweat beading on his brow, "we call Loire."

"I don't think so, gentlemen."

A decisive click behind them gave both men pause. It was the sound of a safety disengaging.

…

…

…

"Xu."

Something at the base of his spine prickled at her presence, a familiar raise in his hackles he'd enjoyed since their first encounter. There was something in that woman that made him go on guard.

"Very astute."  Xu, for all her usual crisp and clean appearance, certainly looked like shit now. Heavy bags hung under her eyes, and several heart monitor patches were still stuck to her skin, which was ghostly pale.  The young woman's eyes glimmered with a dull fury, however, that belied her exhaustion. 'What have you done?"

He chuckled with a cynicism he couldn't quite muster fully. "Not what, Xu. _Whom_."

"You mangy son of a bitch-" The dark haired woman charged forward, looking more murderous than he'd ever seen her before. Her movements, usually crisp and precise, were slow and sluggish, and Seifer easily side-stepped her as her fist swooped through the air, missing his cheek by inches.

"Let's not bring my mother into this," he countered, smoothly, adjusting his coat. It was then that he noticed the somewhat airy feeling in his boot. Had we forgotten his sock? He wiggled his toes. Shit. He'd forgotten his sock.

"I have the utmost sympathy for the woman that created you," snarled the Lieutenant. "And I pity the other women you've managed to trick throughout your miserable life."

Anger rose to the surface at her reference to his mother, but he held back. _Easy_, Almasy.  _Easy_. Xu had always been territorial when it came to Quistis, and had always been vicious when it came to him. The two had simply been combined.

"Quistis is a big girl, Xu. She can make her own decisions."

Xu just glared at him silently in response.  "I'm not so sure, concerning you."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Are we going to dance all night with your hand on my ass, or are you going to get to the point, Xu?"

Xu was positively seething. "Where are you going with this, Almasy?" 

"With what?"

Xu made an angry, sweeping gesture around her to indicate.

He sneered. "_I'm_ going to Esthar, once this spinning joke of a military institution touches down."

"Giving up and running. The only two things you've ever been good at." She was getting closer to him. "Or maybe that's only because those are the only things you've ever tried?"

"Don't give me this introspective bullshit," he spat. "You're as happy to see me go as anyone else." He crossed his arms over his chest. "You're rid of me, and now you're trying to talk me out of it?"

"You don't know shit about shit, Almasy. You never have." She snarled. "I thought your two year vacation in the slums might have finally wizened you up. That maybe Quistis was right about you for once. I was wrong."

"One would think **you'd** be used to it by now." he sneered.

Xu looked as if she were about to breathe fire. "Almasy, you're a selfish prick and you'll always be a selfish prick. You're nothing but a worthless vagabond with delusions of grandeur-"

"Get some new material, Xu, or get the fuck out of my way."

And just like that, things had gotten nasty.

Now Xu was shouting. "You think she'll thank you for leaving? She'll hate you for it."

_How had they gotten to Quistis?_

Seifer opened his mouth to retort, but something cold had settled in his chest at Xu's last words.

_She'll hate me anyway..._

"What do you care?" he snarled.

"I don't. **I** care about **her**."

_Unlike _**you**_._

 Xu's greatest argumentative strength had always lay not in what she said, but what she alluded to. But what Xu had hinted at had never stung him so profusely before.

"**You** don't know shit about shit." He countered hotly.

Xu put her hands on her hips. "Don't I? Then that wasn't you snaking out just now like a coward?"

It was official. They'd finally gotten under each other's skin after nearly ten years of drilling.

"Why not go back to your own life instead of worrying about other people's, Xu? The last time I checked, your dickless nights and power trip days weren't getting you any promotions-"

Xu looked ready to explode. "The sooner you're gone, the better. In fact, why wait for Garden to _land_?"

"Then quit wasting my time," He growled in a low whisper, "and let me **leave**." He started to walk past her, but her next words stopped him.

"She loves you, you selfish son of a bitch. Hyne knows why, because I sure as hell don't. " Xu spat it as if they were the vilest words she'd ever uttered. "And you're going to walk away from it, like a fool."

Strange heat spread in his chest before he could quell it. And he wished then, perhaps more than she, that she had said those words to anyone else as well. They were, without a doubt, the only words that could have hurt him-

-and they had.

He turned to look back at Xu. "No. It was cold out and I was the first warm body to walk by. She was tired of being lonely and I was the first thing with a dick and a passing interest-"

Empty, _empty_, **_empty_**…it was draining out of him….

"You ungrateful son of a bitch-"

In a split second, Xu's closed fist snapped him in the mouth. It didn't surprise him- he had never figured Xu for the slapping kind. Too dainty. The blow turned his head slightly, but he didn't break his even stare even as warm blood began to dribble down his lower lip. Frankly, he was just happy that Xu didn't have a gun in her hands. If she had, he was reasonably sure she would have shot him in the balls. They glared at each other for a moment, both taking back nothing.

When Xu spoke next, her voice was calm and quiet, but fury lurked behind each syllable that passed her tongue. In most of their half-hearted banters, Xu's had glimmered with potent dislike and a mild conceit that shone through in her superior-than-thou demeanor. Now, however, they shone with a concentrated hatred that almost gave him pause to smirk at her.

"Find a short cliff or a long bottle…I don't care which. But if you ever try to come back here, I'll blow your brains out before you can climb the first step." Her gaze never broke with his. "Believe it like you've never believed anything in your miserable life. I'll shoot you between the eyes before you can touch the door."

_Before you can touch _**her**. The words went unspoken, but he saw it in Xu's odious gaze.

He felt it himself. 

But anger was boiling in him, too. "Why wait? You've been waiting to put a bullet in my _back_ for years." he snarled He gave her a mocking bow, before presenting her with his the back of his stalking figure. "If you hurry, I'm sure you can get a gun in time for Esthar's arrival."

"Don't fucking tempt me," she spat back, digging her shoulder into his as she brushed past him, the bone of her shoulder blade deliberately cutting into the old bullet wound in his arm.

"Bitch," he snarled under his breath as he stalked down the dormitory hall towards his own room. Xu's action had spurred a patch of pinpricks in the area, but with it, darkness had briefly flashed across his eyes as well.  And the weird crap in the darkness was almost more upsetting than the pain itself.

_Very soon now._

He glanced behind him, but Xu was almost around the corner.

_Crazy, Almasy._

The better half of him almost wished that Xu would have had a gun on her person in that moment…

…if, indeed, there was a better half of him left.

…

….

…

"Get those G-Mo's in position," ordered Squall, surveying the open landscape that stretched behind them before turning back around. Esthar's now partially transparent barrier glimmered in the early light of dawn, revealing a mass of turquoise building complexes set in the quiet crimson hues of the sun's first fire. A thin film of frost coated the grass, and a heavy chill weighted down the air. The weather was cold and sluggish, and Squall couldn't seem to shake it from his bones. The small group huddled by a trio of G-Mo's, their breath puffing in the air.

The Ragnarok loomed far in the distance. The ship had made several different trips this morning, between towing the machine guns down and transporting the squadrons. He wanted to keep Balamb Garden airborne for as long as possible, due to the fact that the large structure would attract undue attention to the Esthar landscape and Laguna was very nervous about possible terrorist factions locating the basic perimeter of Esthar's outer shields. By the time Squall had second thoughts about tractor-pulling the 2 ton machine trucks, it was too late and Selphie had already shrugged off his concerns. If the ship could ram the lunar pandora, she reasoned, the Ragnarok could certainly do a little air-borne towing.

As a result of his lieutenant's confidence, the Ragnarok had nearly lost its tail in landing and Squall had gained a few more gray hairs in watching Selphie fishtail the descent. The machine guns were roughly fifty thousand gil apiece, and he didn't even want to think about how hard it would be to get any spare parts for the Ragnarok.

 "Squad five-A, your job is to stay here and catch any stragglers that the other Squads drive out or miss. No excessive amount of force is to be used. Got it?"

"Yes sir." replied the team of six in front of him, all eager faces shining with nervous expectation. All the cadets wore bright, hopeful expressions that fairly hummed with nerves beneath their black down jackets. Squall doubted he had never been so excited in his life. New prospective SeeD candidates were like lemmings on prozac- the nervous energy was almost irritating.

Then again, at five in the morning, pretty much everything was irritating.

Poor fools. He knew what SeeD was really like- three-day reconnaissance missions in sewers, fifty-mile treks in the rain, and miles upon miles of paperwork. Then again, they didn't need to know that. Yet.

"May I ask one question, Commander Leonhart?" A young cadet named Viora Delingar was gazing at him with a mixture of nervous curiosity and admiration, tugging nervously on her uniform sleeves. Viora was not a candidate for active status- she would most likely be reconnaissance. Not for the first time, Squall wondered at the morality of converting the lambs in front of him into the wolves they would have to become to survive in the world that Garden would create for them…

"Um, Mr. Leonhart?"

_Must have spaced out….  _

"What is it?"  he asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. Squall had never enjoyed field trials, including his own. These promised to be fairly routine, however. Esthar had died down since the fiasco at the Garden council meeting, and now Squall looked forward to following up on a few leads in the city once this mission was completed. Laguna had contracted SeeD at a discount rate, since Squall was taking the opportunity to run a few field trials and therefore couldn't necessarily guarantee a clean job. 

Squall sighed as he ran a hand through his hair. He was just glad that he wasn't Selphie, who had the Squad C sewer team. Glyphias's groups were spread on all sides of the northern part of the city, and were moving through in a kind of drive. His job was to get the leftovers.

He hated the SeeD trials- some rookie almost always screwed up procedure and wound up with a missing arm or a broken leg, which meant miles upon miles of accident reports.

"What was your question, Viora?" he sighed.

"Um, since Esthar has that big barrier of theirs, how does anything get in, much less monsters of any kind?"

Squall shifted his weight and looked to the horizon. Looked like rain. The sooner they got out, the better. Nothing worse than trying to wrestle monsters in the rain. "Since the Lunar Cry two years ago, Esthar has been riddled with remote monster hives. There are probably a few colonies in the sewers that the teams missed the first time through. It shouldn't be more than a few grats and-"

"Squad team B to Commander Leonhart, come in please." Squall picked up the communicator from his waist and flipped the switch.

"What is it, Glyphias?"

"Squads are in position. Permission to activate teams requested."

"Permission to move granted. Let's get this over with." He replied. "Squad team A over and out." Switching the channel to a different frequency, he once again put the comm up by his mouth. "Squad team C, come in."

"Hi Squall! I mean, Squad team C reporting, commander!" came Selphie's cheery voice. How the girl could be awake at five in the morning, knee-deep in sewage, and cheerful was beyond him, but then again, a lot was beyond him at five in the morning on the Estharian outskirts. Including sleep.

"Acknowledged," he replied. "Team C, move forward at-"

Suddenly, he lurched forward, nearly losing his balance as the very earth beneath him seemed to keel forward. The G-mo's rattled, the ammo clips swinging in the now silent breeze.

"The fuck-" Squall glanced behind him. "Squad C, did you hear that?"

"What?! Squall…..heard…crash…get that…khhhhhhhhhhhhhhttttt."

Squall rattled the communicator, but the channel was dead. "Shit."  Ignoring the six worried gazes fixed on him, Squall switched the channel over. "Serabin, report."

"Khhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht."

 Swearing, Squall threw his communicator to the ground. "Piece of-"

Suddenly, another rumble shook the ground, and a spray of glass and blue steel burst from an adjacent street, spattering in the air before once was silent once more.

_"Shit."_

…

…

…

"GARDEN DOCKING IN APPROXIMATELY THREE HOURS, PREPARE ACCORDINGLY."

Quistis cracked open an eyelid as Garden's old engine coughed and ground and groaned its way across an awakening landscape. Sunlight stung her eyes from the small window in her bedroom, and she squinted, frowning as she shifted between the sheets. She shifted, and opened her eye wider at the almost sinful sensation of sheets sliding against bare skin. Startled, she opened her other eye and clutched the sheets to her breasts before she remembered the reason for her state. She rolled onto her back and let a sigh escape her lips.

Automatically, her hand drifted out to the expanse of bed sheets beside her, and found them to be cold.

Of course…. why should they be anything else? Why should this morning be any different than any other?

Because last night was so different from any she'd ever spent before?

She stared at her hands, which were still marred with small cuts from the glass; tiny, angry red slashes.

_Last night…_

_Last night, in the snow, reliving old demons.__ Last night, in the snow, with Seifer, not thinking but simply feeling, his hands on her and in the shower, his mouth on her-_

She reddened and shut her eyes, but the image didn't fade. She pressed her hand against the opposite side of the bed, into the impression left on the sheets.

-_lying__ in bed, his hands on her skin, lazy, his voice a quiet murmur in the dark and she could almost swear he _**cared**_ about her-_

**Impossible**_…Seifer Almasy didn't care about anything…and yet there it was, his fingertips on her skin and the soft, deep lull of his voice in the dark…_

What good did these thoughts do her? It wasn't yesterday. It was today, and the today bed was cold and at least three muscles she never knew she had were painfully reminding her of what had transpired last night.  She quickly withdrew her hand from the side of the bed, as if the cold stung her- it had never felt so _personal_ before.

She gathered the sheets around her and slowly, gingerly easing from the mattress. She moved sluggishly towards the small bathroom. She flicked on the lights, and squinted when the light stung her eyes. 

She dropped the sheets and leaned heavily on the basin, staring hard into the mirror. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, tousled and tangled. She looked completely unlike herself.

She glanced at her watch on the sink, only to realize it was much later than she had expected.

"Damnit." She muttered, rushing out of the bathroom to dress. She reached for her clip on the bedside table, only to realize, ten minutes later, that it was nowhere to be found. "Damnit!"

Fastening the clips on her SeeD uniform and clipping her whip to her belt, she quickly walked to the small pantry to pour herself a cup of morning tea only to realize that she hadn't boiled any. Slamming the tea kettle back onto the stove, she stalked from the room, a flustered and determined stride in her step. She would find Seifer, and get….whatever the hell this was…straightened out. After, of course, she found Cerberus. Hopefully the dog hadn't traumatized anything or anyone overnight.

Quistis ran an agitated hand through her loose hair. Her routine was ruined, and there was a cold feeling in her stomach, one that stung with every step she took. People had always lectured her on the dangers and routines of loneliness...

…but the cold spot across from her in the bed had never infected her this way before.

…

…

…

He slept like a child- a peaceful manner fitting his calm expression. The rhythm of his heart was steady, strong- his palms were cool. She monitored his body with vigilance, as if her watch would steady his breath and ensure the continued beating of his heart. It seemed that all her life she had watched as things went on around her, an audience to the circumstances her loved ones endured. It was her punishment, perhaps, for all her life wanting a life that was never meant to be hers.

All those years wasted by wishing and now, she found she only desired the one she'd had, the one that was fading fast before her eyes.

Gently she smoothed a lock of hair from his brow, pressing her lips against the bandaged curve of his forehead. She felt that this would be the last time they sat together. She felt it in her breast, cold, in the place where dread and a woman's intuition tumultuously lurked.

She fought it off, for the moment.

"These cannot be the last moments that pass between us," she whispered. Not these last moments, pregnant with the hushed, impersonal pause of a white-walled room. Not this same silence that had fallen upon the last two years of their lives together. No, not this crippling absence of words that would forever fall between them. She sang old lullabies to fill the quiet, but the quiet state of his form hung on her like a heavy coat, weighted her down.

Their former days had been measured out in silence, in forced smiles and unspoken accusations. She never mentioned her ghosts, and he never accused her of keeping them. She never chastised him for what he wasn't- he never condemned her for what she was.

It could not end this way. Theirs was supposed to be a destiny of long, lazy days spent out on emerald lawns- watching the children of their borrowed family grow. Theirs was supposed to be a eulogy of quiet summer evenings, holding hands on dusky porches and remembering younger days that still burned a little like fire on their smiling lips.

And yet, she could feel it, lurking in the shadows, whispering along the windowpane. She could feel it in the subtle frost that kept the room-that had, for so long, kept her heart.

Silently, she eased into the bed next to him, climbing onto the small cot and wedging her thin form next to his.  It has been too long.

_Bella detesta matribus, et uxor._

"I love you," she whispered, before laying her cheek down next to his, singing softly. She only hoped, that from whatever dream he was dreaming, that he could still hear her voice, and that it would bring him peace. After awhile, her voice faded with sleep, but their melody continued.  No sheets or shields between them…only the silence to keep the time.

…

…

…

After a somewhat disconcerting run-in with Zell and Cerberus, who were both apparently banned from the cafeteria for life, Quistis finally reached the main circlet of Balamb's hallway flustered and heavily pressed for time. She had to find Arya- her eyes sifted through the crowd-

-and snagged on a shock of blonde hair and a stature that towered over most of the cadets around them. Her heart shrank back even as her stubbornness willed her forward from beneath the traffic.

"Seifer!" He stopped, and turned only slightly, and it was then that she caught the small black bag slung around his shoulders, Hyperion swinging loosely at his side. He raised an eyebrow when he located the source of the shout, apparently surprised to see her.

"You're….leaving?"  _Brilliant deduction, Trepe, _she thought.

A shrug.

_A yes, then.__ But how could he leave, now?_

_He left this morning easily enough, didn't he? _

"About last night…I-" The words stuck in her throat. What could she say? _Don't leave?_

His gaze was cold. "You offered. I accepted. Did I miss something?" He turned back, as if impatiently waiting for something.

_But….the things that….the way he…._

She stared at him, ice pooling in her stomach even as she balled her hands into fists.

_Don't make a scene_, _Quistis_.

He clenched his jaw and turned towards her.

She looked into his eyes, her own searching… "...I don't believe you." Courage burned in her, fast and fleeting, draining rapidly against the determined cold in his eyes.  "I think it was more than that…more than that for both of us."

_Wasn't it_? Say something…anything….please don't say it meant nothing to you….

Students shuffled past them, and he said nothing. A few gazes snagged on them- it wasn't often that Quistis Trepe walked around Garden with her hair down.

And Quistis instantly recognized her fatal flaw- in lending Seifer her heart, she had somehow, somewhere, forgotten to get it back. And now, here, in the moment she herself had supplied, she had given the man in front of her leave to break it. And he _would_.

The certainty sat like sharpened icicles above her heart, a breath away from falling.

_Please…no…_

"More than that…" He glared at her. "Funny. That's what they all say." His gaze was empty. Cold.

_What they all say._

And just like that, the sharpened, icy barrage came tumbling down, slicing through her chest just as surely as if he had stabbed Hyperion directly through her chest. There was a pregnant, volatile pause as she stood in the middle of the great foyer, hurt pooling in her eyes against every wish in her body, her feet rooted to the floor.

"Did you need anything else?" His voice jarred her out of her trance.

She froze for a moment, hurt catching her in a vice grip that stilled all the way up to her eyes, which were burning now with a traitorous moisture. She rushed past him, wiping her arm across her eyes with a furious swipe as she charged down the hallway with only thought- to get to her room as quickly as possible.

The door to her room couldn't come quickly enough. As it closed behind her, the first of the burning tears began to fall. Angrily, she wiped at them_, stop crying, damnit_, clearing her vision and focusing on-

A sock.

Her tears forgotten, she frowned and stooped over to pick it up. It was bigger than any of hers…Seifer's, no doubt…

…he must have left it in his mad dash to escape. The morning came flooding back- the cold sheets, the sting of humiliation ringing loudly in her ears, and her routine-

Yes, her routine, her stupid, routine little life in disarray for a one night stand that meant nothing to no one and a left sock-

She had thought one night would be enough. But it wasn't. It was nowhere close.

Something snapped within her then, and with a strangled scream she threw the sock against the wall as hard as she could. The sock hid with a dull thud and slid down the wall in a quiet puddle. incensed at the lack of sound and fury that her action produced, Quistis drove her booted foot into the divider, digging the tip through the wall in a cloud of dust and plaster.

**You** kissed him.

**You** asked him to dance.

_What did you think he was going to do? You made it so _**easy**_…_

"Shut up…"

She looked up, only to see her reflection in the mirror. Stupid. Weak. Breaking over what? A boy?

_Don't you know what boys do to pretty little girls? _**THEY'LL EAT YOU UP-**

Picking up a discarded dress shoe, she hurled it into the mirror above her desk, watching with satisfaction as the glass splintered.

And so what? There was no alcoholic stepmother here to cut her, no weak father to press his sticky, fumbling hands beneath her skirt. There was only the world she created, and what she allowed into it. She herself had allowed in this pain, this humiliating agony. Eleven years of tedious wall building, constructing her world of stone and ice, the safe and predictable and secure, and for one man, for one night, she had torn it down-

-and for what?

She had to get this memory off of her.

She tore off her clothes as she stumbled to the shower, turning on the hot water knob as far as it would go and sinking against the wall into a shaking puddle as the scalding water pounded hard against her back. She clenched her jaw and sat there until the urge to cry left her. She stared hard at the wet tile, and she waited until her emotion curled into something workable…something useful.

She sat there for half an hour, until the water had burned an angry red mark onto her back and until she could summon no more pity for herself. There were more important things now.

Cid….the Garden Council…Odine's research.

**Cid**.

The time for self-depreciation and lonely musings could be fashioned into an art for later- she could re-master the art of being alone as if another possibility had never existed. She could re-learn her routines, could rebuild her walls. And she would build them stronger, would build them higher. No one would get through.

She dressed in silence, straightening her skirt and making sure her shirt was evenly tucked in. She buttoned her jacket and stepped into her shoes. Thoroughly exasperated with the absence of her clip, she let her hair down her back.

Esthar would come, and he would be gone, and she would have her life back.

Her sad, lonely, ordered little life.

…

…

…

The com buzzed, the red light on her door blinking. Arya lifted an eyebrow from her perch on the bed and dog-eared her current page on the book in front of her. "Come in."

"Hey Arya." Quistis stood looking exhausted but determined, her tall form slouched along the doorframe.  Cerberus' hulking frame lurked behind her, tall wagging.

Arya looked up from her book. Men might be from Trabia, and Women from Dollet, but Zell was definitely from Esthar, and this book was no help at all. "I've got Odine's database forcepped open like you asked," she said. "It's on Computer 2C in your old classroom."

"Thanks." A pause.  "How _illegal_ are you feeling today, Arya?"

Arya set down her book, casting Quistis a wary but interested look with a raise of her eyebrow. "Illegal in terms of what?"

"Oh, invading someone's personal files and extracting that information for our own personal use." Quistis leisurely studied a nail.

Arya grinned, cracking her knuckles, a gleam overtaking her normally stoic brown eyes. "Why didn't you say so? Let's go."

Quistis smiled before shoving off of the frame. "I knew I liked you for a reason," she said.

…

…

…

"All right. Let's see here." Said Arya, adjusting her glasses. Squinting at the screen, she inserted a small compact disk into the C drive. "What do we need?"

Quistis pulled up a chair next to her. "All information concerning any biotech experiments Odine has been conducting."

_Sorry Odine old buddy_, thought Quistis,_ but if you won't give it to me, I'll get it on my own._

Quistis watched in fascination as Arya's fingers typed at lightening speed, eyes flickering as they followed the type.

**ACCESS DENIED.**

Arya just smiled. "Ah…firewalls. Don't they know it only makes me want to hack them more?"  She continued typing, then with an air of finality, hit the enter key before leaning back.

**ACCESS DENIED.**

"Hmmm….top secret stuff, I guess. This calls for a virus."

"What kind of virus?"

"Well," began Arya, her fingers never ceasing their constant typing, "If Odine's computer is on, this'll install a bunch of different 'helpful' software packages and upgrades, which in turn 'updates' Odine's password into whatever I feel like. I call it the Battering-RAM virus. Annnnd, yep, it's on! We're in luck!"

Quistis' admiration for Arya had just risen a few notches.

"Done!" announced Arya, sliding her chair back so that Quistis could move in.

**Welcome, Odine! You have no new messages.**

A menu flitted up against a drab blue screen, complete with a beaker for a mouse cursor.

_Garden Documents(59)_

_Personal(__2)_

_Finances(__31)_

_Agendas(__47)_

_Roster(__3,651)_

_Etc(__65)_

_Biogen__(__9)_

Arya got to her feet and connected a small cable from one computer to another. "Mind if I look with you?" she asked. "This database was a bitch to get into. I'm not sure how long my software is going to go undetected, but I can keep it open for awhile. I'm curious to see what Odine was guarding so closely, if you don't mind."

"The more the merrier," replied Quistis, shrugging.

Quistis eyes instantly landed on the BioGen part, but as soon as she clicked on it, a password prompt came up. "Hey, Arya, can you hack into this, too?"

Arya leaned over to see where Quistis was pointing. "Yeah, I'll get on it."

Drumming her fingers, Quistis decided to click on Personal to pass the time. She felt a little guilty, but she felt considerably less so when she thought of how rude the doctor had been to her in their previous correspondence. As soon as she clicked on the link, a music window came blaring up, nearly causing Quistis to fall off her chair.

"Uh-uh-oh, wanna be free yeah to feel the way I feel- man, I feel like a woman-"

Arya quickly leaned over and closed the link, laughing as she did so. "Who knew Odine was so in tune with his feminine side?"

"The clothing should have been an indication," muttered Quistis, once again bringing her eyes to the screen.

_This is the journal of Odine Klaukhaus, Lead Researcher of the Esthar Lab._

_EXPERIMENT: GENEDEN _

_ACCESS NUMBER: 1415787676_

_Entry 1: Let me just announce that I have had reservations about this project from the start. But Martine must have his weapon, and I desperately need the funding. I gave him no guarantees. He knows I am the only one that will touch this project, and will pay accordingly. What else can I do? Laguna has cut scientific funding again- that bumbling fool would not know scientific value unless it was presented in a picture book. It is his fault I resort to this._

"I'm in!" announced Arya. But Quistis was intrigued, and simply nodded her on.

_Entry 2: Recovered host: Damage to jugular, croicoid cartilage crushed, seven ribs broken, Extensive chest trauma. Vena cava and aortic valve irreparable. Mechanical supplements considered. Subject two weeks deceased…deterioration is surprisingly minimal- this is possibly due to the high amount of mag poisoning present at the cellular level. Subject named: Eve01._

"Hey Quistis! Get a load of this!" said Arya. Quistis broke her attention with the screen to listen to Arya recite the message. "It's a bunch of Odine's correspondences."

"_Re: Your Request._

_Martine,_

_Although I appreciate your generous offer to contribute to our lab's funding, I feel the project you have asked me undertake is both impossible, and frankly, insane. _

_Regeneration of dead tissue using electronic stimulus within a silicon medium is something my lab has been working on developing- however, it is not yet clear how much of its original state the organism may retain. On the level of a lower organism, this includes basic instincts and impulses and in a higher level of organism, this may include memories. We have tested only Grats thus far. Hardly a valid comparison for the procedure you propose._

_Frankly, I feel that project GenEden can result in nothing but failure, but seeing as your organization has donated generously to my lab in the past, I have included our findings thus far related to your project._

_Sincerely,._

_Dr. Odine_

_Head of Esthar Lab Research"_

"Interesting," replied Quistis, frowning. "And odd."

"That's not the half of it. Listen to this, it's dated two weeks later. It says:

_M,_

_Thank you for your most generous donation to our program. We meet Monday at Zephyr's café. Come alone._"

Quistis frowned. This was getting bizarre, yes, but it wasn't what she was looking for. "Interesting. Print out all of Odine's findings concerning his Bio-toxin research, would you?"

"Sure thing!" said Arya, adjusting her glasses and turning back to the screen. "Better hurry, though. They've got surveillance specs on this thing like you couldn't believe. That virus program of theirs has already eaten two of my software programs. The Trabian Horse should keep it busy for awhile, though."

Quistis nodded and turned back to the screen.

_Day1: DNA tests run, tissue samples, blood/fluid analysis. All abnormal. Subject exhibits abnormal genotype…it is neither male nor female, nor is it limited to one species. We believe that this abnormality is due to the intense levels of mag-poisoning in the blood and issue, which have degraded the DNA, but are unsure. In theory, however, this should not be a problem. _

_Day2: Preliminary tests still being run._

_Day4: Have immersed Eve01 in a saline nutrient solution, oxygenated by pure O2 tanks fed into the jetstream. Facial tissue is regenerating nicely. Growth of hair and fingernails persists. In earlier tissue processing, we located a virus, which we have mapped out and is incomparable to any other viral maps we possess. Currently it seems inactive, however. The most physical damage is concentrated to chest and thoracic region- damage to lower extremities is beyond repair. Donors will have to be found for the heart and lungs. I do not ask Martine where he plans to obtain these items- I am better off not knowing. Much new, healthy tissue will be needed- latent mag poisoning has rendered the great majority of it unusable for grafting. Given the nature of my supplier, this should not be a problem. Martine is most anxious for his weapon. _

"What the hell are you _making_, Odine?" whispered Quistis under her breath.

_Day10: Donors found. Eve01 is rejecting the transplant- a mechanical hybrid may be in order. Reflexory movement is occurring. One of the aids have quit. He fears we have supplanted Hyne. He is a fool. Hyne would smile upon my work. In the shadows of this room, I swear He guides my hands._

_Day 26: New transplants are in place- we have used a partial pacemaker to stimulate Eve01's original heart. Martine visited the lab today and left pale when I showed him how it beat. Martine is under pressure from his Estharian and Galbadian funders. They want results. They want their weapon. Foolish Martine did not realize till now that his funders would seek such an active role behind the controls. Martine sought a weapon to raise Galbadia above all other Gardens- to give credibility to a failing mobile mercenary. His funders seek more- I am unsure as to their limits. I tell myself that I cannot be responsible for the dreams of other men. I am a creator, an artist.  Let other men make of my creation what they will. My hands are clean._

Day 54: Eve01 opened its eyes today. They followed my movement, but belied no emotion. Brain activity is still low, but the eyes….I swear that these eyes are not those of a tabula rosa, but of an old thing reawakened.  But Martine wants his weapon. Martine must have his new weapon, and I must have my funding…

_Day 94: Time to apply the new skin grafts and to increase the nutrient feeds. I will use the mag-coupled saline solution of Kadowaki's design. I have not slept in three days and can no longer remember the last time that I ate. The work consumes me- the questions, the set-backs mean nothing. It is no longer a question of possibility, but a question of how. Not why, only how, when. Yes, now, very now, very soon, it will be ready. The money means nothing. This is my greatest work. _

_Day 111: Martine is growing nervous as my work progresses. He is becoming rather like a caged animal cornered on all sides, and appropriately so. Laguna has begun to suspect divisions in his ranks, and has sent teams to sniff out those too power-hungry for his liking. He will send the SeeD dogs, just as he sent a group of those hired mongrels to check Galbadia's inflated budget and wound up at my door. Those in-bred idiots can smuggle money, but they can't transfer funds appropriately. I had an interesting time entertaining my guests before they were satisfied with the budget appropriations. Fortunate for Galbadia that they have bugs in high places. Martine nearly had an audit on his hands. _

_The puppets are beginning to wash up on shore. The Headmaster had to file several accident reports._

_The man is breaking from every angle._

_ Meanwhile, Martine's contributors want demonstrations, and Martine grows ever fearful of what Eve01 may be capable of demonstrating._

_It is too late to back out now._

Quistis looked up from the monitor. Laguna had sensed dissenters in his ranks? She had not been notified of such a mission. And yet, there was no reason she would have been- each SeeD mission was separate and highly confidential.

Still….she had also been unaware of the SeeD team sent to investigate Odine's use of funds as well. She supposed that being on speaking terms with Squall might have helped matters….

She minimized the window, then clicked on the **B. System Database**.

Please enter your ID.

_Alpha313459 _

It was Xu's ID, and Quistis felt a little guilty for using it (and for memorizing it in the first place), but desperate times called for desperate measures.

**Password?**

**Welcome, Chang, Xu. **

**What would you like to view?**

**_Garden _****_Mission_****_ Reports._******

**Which reports would you like to view?**

**_Contract (ALL) Laguna Loire._******

**Finding….**

**247 cases found.**

Quistis scanned the list, then quickly selected the two whose dates and descriptions matched Odine's journal entries.

_Mission__: 34959-01-06837A-V67_

_Contract: Laguna Loire_

_Artillery: Minimal_

_Classification: High_

_Team Members: Glyphias, Serabin (team captain)/ Garek, Brek/Daris, Bergan_

_Specs: See mission report, file  34959-01-06837A-V67, Second floor office_

_Mission__: 23343-043-23540C-C47_

_Contract: Laguna Loire_

_Artillery: Minimal_

_Classification: Restricted_

_Team Members: Dorlin, Jamis, Garek, Brek, Glyphias, Serabin(team captain), Thammavong, Nida (tech support)._

_Specs: Restricted._

Quistis' frown increased. Odine spoke of a weed. Both Brek and Serabin had been on those missions….either one of them could….

No. Brek Garek was a swine, but he was SeeD. Quistis prided herself on knowing people, and Brek Garek had neither the gumption nor the balls to accomplish such a multi-faceted feat. The kid could barely memorize codes and procedures, for Hyne's sake.  His father's political stance was more in money than in power, and the man was already richer than Hyne himself. What reason did he have to dabble in military stock?

And Serabin?

Impossible. Wasn't it? Serabin came from a long line of Estharian politicians. He had been groomed for a life in the public eye and was every inch a gentleman. His father was an influential member of the Estharian cabinet. And yet, Serabin seemed so dedicated…

Quistis ran an agitated hand through her hair. Wolves on all sides…

_Day249: Lab aids have all quit. It is no matter. The grunt work is done. The Galbadian government grows impatient- sniveling dogs sniffing around my laboratory, asking meaningless questions. The art of science is wasted on these men. These men are nothing but pigs whose cloven hooves have evolved to trigger fingers. I despise the military.  _

_Eve01 is almost ready._

_Day 311: Martine has grown unstable. There are some that will find this unacceptable. _

_It is time to begin._

Quistis paused before reading the entry date aloud to Arya, who nodded and immediately typed something into her own computer.

Arya looked up from her screen after a few minutes. "The last feeds of the IGCS system were on the day Odine wrote this entry. They were one-sided feeds, really. According to the last records, Galbadia attempted to contact Balamb Garden seventeen different times and received an unusable system each time. It was Martine's signature, too, that was attempting the connections.

Quistis frowned. "But why would Martine attempt to contact Balamb? The system had been down for two weeks by then."

Arya shrugged. "Martine didn't know the system was down, maybe." She got up and stretched. "I'm going to go get some coffee. You want something?"

Quistis shook her head, and the door soon closed after Arya, leaving Quistis with her thoughts.

How could Martine _not_ know the system was down? Cid had been informed within the hour…

_Day 347: My conscience has become a persistent annoyance as of late. Here in the darkness, I feel I am reminded of the words of a great philosopher. He said that __his " idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on."  _

_It must go on, then, mustn't it? Is there any good or evil to this life so much as the natural progression of power?_

_ No. I cannot believe it…must not believe it….and yet, the basis of my life's work has not been so much the order of good and evil but the natural order of things, the true order.  There is not so much any good but the progression of power and not so much any evil as the attempt to halt its progression.  The only evil in this world is weakness. _

_The process will go on, then, and I shall be its executor._

_And yet this guilt… I cannot be held responsible for this. This is the result of the dreams of powerful men. I am but a simple artist…a humble creator. _

_The art of science knows no god or conscience, and then, so must not I. My hands are clean. I will not wear the blood of innocent men- it is not my hands that guides the knife. I made the blade…but not to wield it. _

_My hands are clean.  _

Quistis sat back in her seat, staring blankly at the screen. The last of Odine's entries was dated one day before that of the IGCS collapse. Odine's seemed to be going in circles towards the end….the man seemed almost mad.

The date itself was an odd coincidence…

…if indeed it was a coincidence at all.

She tried to tie everything together in her mind, and the effect was dizzying. This is not at all what she had expected to find. Data, yes, but Odine's personal electronic confessional, no. There were sets of data and graphical analysis, but none of it made any sense. The references to bio-mag coupling were few and muddled.

_And yet…_

_The IGCS…._

_The poisoned bullets…_

_The Garden Council…_

_Cid…_

Suddenly, Quistis' eyes grew wide. She jumped up from her chair, knocking it over, but appeared not to notice as she turned and ran from the room. She had to find the others, before it was-

_Too late._

…

…

…

The control station was utterly dead and deserted, and Xu was grateful for the lack of company. What parts of her that weren't groggy were either furious or in pain. It made for a strange mix of adrenaline and depressant that currently had her as unfit for company as a Ruby Dragon with a hangnail.

She had plunked herself down at the controls, for the past few hours, dozing between the land of the living and the dead and for the moment not caring much where she ended up. A crackle from the transmission board sparked her attention, however, when it nearly startled her off of her seat.

"….base. Base…incoming….kkhhhhhtttt"

"Base responding to Leon01. What is your position?"

"Critical….khhhhhhhhth…… ….send help immed-khhhhhht."

"Base to Leon01. What is your position?"

"Fifty……..north…northwest….I repeat……..khhhhhhhhht."

Xu looked up from the transmission deck only to blanch at the view in front of her. "Oh, Hyne--"

…

…

…

Seifer snapped his head up from his deadened daze, brought out of his nearly comatose reverie by the grinding of Garden's landing gear beneath his feet. His guts felt like someone had dropped a lead weight in them.

He had passed the library a few times- watching Rajin and Fujin chatting by the tall stacks but somehow never collecting enough guts to go in and say goodbye.

Rajin made a wide gesture with his hands, obviously telling some fantastic (and heavily embellished) story, and Fujin smiled.

_What would you tell them, anyway? How could you explain that you're leaving, and you're not ever going to see them again? They wouldn't let you go. They wouldn't understand that it's better this way. But it is. It has to be._

He turned, slowly walking away from the library entrance and towards the exit. Quistis was probably holed up in her room now, ruing the day she ever laid eyes on him but probably cursing the night she slept with him a million times more.

_You made her cry._

_If you stayed, you would have made her cry plenty more than once, Almasy._

_You hurt her._

_You would have hurt her anyway._

Damn, but he was getting sick of saying it to _himself_.

The floor rumbled beneath him-Garden was beginning to dock. It was time to go.

All his life, it seemed, he had been trying to get somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere better, and never quite getting there in the process. Wishing to be a better man would not erase a year's worth of hellish taint. He had come here out of desperation- hoping against hope that there was one place on the earth left for him. But there was nowhere.  All his life he had tried to make somewhere out of nowhere only to find that perhaps that only place he had ever belonged was beneath a card table, watching his own future slowly bleed to death over the rug.

He should have ended it then. It should have ended then.

He walked down the hall towards the landing, then stopped, a strange prickle rising along his spine. He turned, slowly, but it _was as if the world had resorted to slow motion._

**_Knock, knock._**

His head spun, a gust of wind rushing through his skull and chilling him to the bone. He closed his eyes, head tilted slightly to the side, listening as if to catch some straining music. Shadows flickered behind his eyelids. A hand was reaching out-

_Knock, knock._

A sudden shriek tore through the walls, shaking the ceilings and plaster and stone rained down. B-Garden's residents were thrown to their knees, sent sprawling along the marble floors in screaming piles. Seifer raised his head, dazed.

They'd been _struck_.

Another explosion thundered against the walls, sending another shockwave through the floating building as it whirled hard to the right, propelled by the impact. This time, a large chunk of the ceiling broke free, tumbling down to close partially over the library passage. Screams erupted from within. He could see the sky, and it was reeling-

The entire Garden seemed to tilt, floors tilting and sending bodies sprawling. Students shouted, trying to clamber up the now inclined floor as the Garden spun heavily to the right.

"GARDEN SHIELDS, ACTIVATED." A metallic voice rang over the com, over the loud shrieks of the building's structure and the screams of its inhabitants. "SUPPORT THRUSTERS ENGAGED." After a sharp bank that nearly sent him back down, Garden had once again leveled off, although the strain of the engines could be felt in the floor. Screams were still coming from the library.

The library.

Fujin and Rajin were in the library.

Swearing, he launched himself up, skidding along the central rail. Launching himself through the crowds, he managed to worm himself inside the pile of rubble, and-

Rajin was kneeling, arms straining under the force of the heavy rock. Seifer looked down and Hyne-

Fujin was beneath it.

No no no…

"She was trying ta get people out, ya know. All the junior classmen, and then the walls just caved in, and-" Rajin, babbling as he frantically tried to pry the stone off of her. "Gotta get her out, man, it'll be all right, Fuj-"

Fujin.

A large glass shard from the ceiling was buried in her shoulder, blood pooling from the wound. She hissed with the pain, and cried out when both Seifer and Rajin moved to dislodge it. Her eyelids flickered, amber eyes spinning in and out of consciousness. Her hands grappled with Seifer's arm, squeezing it in her agony.  Her hip was crushed under the marble- he could see the blood on the stone and the coil of her intestine, peeking from her uniform. Nausea and panic made him strain harder with the shard.

"DON'T." Her hands were ice cold. "DON'T."

Seifer tried with all his might to lift the heavy chunk of marble that crushed his friend's form, but it wouldn't budge. Rajin joined him, and desperately, the two men heaved together, eyes focused on each other with determination. The Garden lurched again, and Seifer struggled to keep his footing, ducking his head as a shower of plaster pelted him from above.

Fujin's amber colored eye stared up at the men beside her…her men, dim and beautiful against the stinging lights and the roar of the crumbling walls. The pain was fading now, the lower half of her body dead to her, the realization was cold, as numb as her limbs. The pain was almost gone, and she wanted to go with it, to ease into the rising dark. She was so tired, suddenly…

Seifer grunted, muscle straining under the force almost painfully. Nothing. The slab of marble was too heavy.  There was screaming all around, people trying to get in, and get out, people getting crushed under the rubble…Damnit. There had to be a Float spell, somewhere…No. Float spells didn't work on inanimate objects…did they? Why the fuck couldn't he remember? Where the hell was help?

He heard Rajin call out, but his friend's voice was lost in the crushing noise.

Rajin met his eyes from across the stone, and the hopelessness he saw there nearly broke his heart. He felt a hand on his ankle, and looked down to see Fujin, eyes pleading even as blood pooled in the corners of her mouth.

"LEAVE." She coughed. "NOW." Her voice was quiet, fading. The strength in it was gone. "PLEASE."

The walls shook precariously above them.

"No, Fuj! I'm not gonna leave you!" Rajin knelt down, fixing his hand to her cheek and attempting a cure spell.

Fujin swatted his hand away. "DON'T." she coughed, the action spraying blood across the front of her uniform. "NO _GOOD_."

And it was then that Seifer understood what Fujin already had. The damage was the type of damage that no magic could cure. Rajin didn't see it- he was too blind with grief already.

The marble had broken her spine, and it had nearly cut her in half. Desperation sawed in him, a frantic push and pull of what was and what he desperately wished was **not**-

"Fujin, why?" screamed Rajin. "Why are you giving up!" Tears coursed down the larger man's cheeks, and Seifer's heart lurched in his chest.

"TIRED." The young woman ignored the man to her left, tightening her grip on Seifer's arm as she turned her head to face him. Seifer would understand. Seifer would listen. He had to.

"BOTH…LEAVE NOW!" Even nearly cut in half, Fujin's anger never lost her bite, nor did the fierce cut of her eyes diminish underneath the pain.. Even if she could get out now, Seifer knew she would never want that kind of life for herself, and she would hate him for giving it to her. She was like him- too proud.

Seifer looked down and their eyes met, and he understood what she was asking. He would do this thing for her, this last thing, even if it cost him Rajin's friendship.

And it most likely would.

Rajin knelt at her side, wiping her hair from her face even as tears streamed down his cheeks. "I won't leave you, Fuj." He sobbed. "I won't leave ya."

The walls were shaking….the west wing was nearing collapse. If they didn't get out, they'd all be dead. And Rajin knew it. Rajin welcomed it.

Fujin's eyes were on him again, pleading, asking in her last quick breaths the most difficult thing a friend could ask.

The walls shook with another explosion- a row of bookcases tumbled down, cracking the walls even further. A large, truck sized chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling, exploding in a cloud of dust just feet from where they stood.

"SEIFER." That last word, a single word, held every ounce of meaning and desperation left in her body. "GO." He took her hand, kneeling next to her, and squeezing it, once. She nodded.

Rajin knelt down next to her, wiping her hair from her face and kissing her brow, so tenderly. "I won't leave ya, Fuj. I'll stay here with you…and we'll go together…just like we always wanted…"

Seifer stood, walking around behind his distraught friend. "Sorry, Rajin," he muttered, opening his palm against his friend's skull. "Sleep."  Seifer leaned forward, catching Rajin as he slumped bonelessly forward. He met Fujin's eyes…the young woman's lids were drooping heavily, her breath becoming shorter by the moment. Setting Rajin down, he took her hand.

 "LIVE." She whispered. "SEIFER….LIVE."

He wanted to tell her something. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that she was his sister, that she had been a third of each of them, that it would be all right, but nothing came-

She opened her mouth, as if to say something, but never finished it. Her eyes closed, and her chest stopped moving, stilled. That last word, a single word never uttered, held every ounce of meaning left in her body.

She had loved _him_.

Seifer drew back, shaking, jerking away from Fujin's marble grave and out the door. Heaving, he dragged Rajin on the floor behind him, settling the unconscious man down at his feet.

He turned back, racing towards the room, but just as he reached the doorway, the rest of the library caved in. He jumped back just as a piece of concrete roughly the size of a truck just grazed his arm, shaving off the skin of his jacket and nearly jerking him to the floor.

"_Fujin_!" he shouted, his hands pressed against the stone. But he knew she was gone.

He had seen the life slip from her eyes- bright amber melting from tigerstone iris and bleeding out onto the floor, gone with her last breath. Gone. She was gone.

He stood, blinking dully as the dust pooled around his feet and drifted out into the rest of the halls.

Fujin was gone.

…crushed to death like a wingless bird beneath the rubble…Seifer was trembling, sick with the feeling, and he needed to back, to get her, to make sure-

He threw his shoulder against the stone, and was sent sprawling back by another lurch from deep within Garden's belly.

"Fujin! _Fujin_!" He was screaming now, tears in his eyes and his throat felt like fire-

_No_…

But there was no time to think. Screams were erupting everywhere, and the Garden took another lurch to the right, spilling more rubble down the hallways and crushing another handful of cadets. One particularly panicked cadet ran into him, nearly knocking him over. He shoved at the panicked swarm, hunching protectively over Rajin even as he tried to collect his thoughts.

Garden spun again, and through the now open ceiling, he could see Galbadia's underbelly twisting towards them.

_Galbadia__.__ It was fucking Galbadia all along…_

"B.GARDEN ARMED. STAND BY FOR AUXILLARY POWER LOAD."

The fallen Garden was retaliating, a wounded and crippled animal snarling up at the sky with steel arms blazing…

The lights went out, what Seifer assumed to be a temporary blackout due to the massive amounts of power being summoned to Garden's cannons. The screams, however, continued, intensified by the lack of light.

"AUXILLARY POWER LOADED. PREPARE FOR LAUNCH SEQUENCE."

"Missile launch in five, four, three, two…" Xu's voice, counting down as calmly as if she were counting snowflakes.

A beat, then-

"Missles incoming…shield breach estimated in 5.4 seconds. B.Garden, prepare for impact."

_So this was how Trabia had felt, those years ago…._

Seifer crouched down as a booming impact rattled Garden's walls, causing another spray of wall to rain down on the terrified cadets. SeeD's were trained for open combat, not cave-ins, and in the air, trapped within the prison of stone and steel, they were helpless. Seifer breathed through his coat, the dust already burning in his lungs.

Rajin stirred beneath him, moaning something incoherent. Seifer wasn't particularly looking forward to him waking up.

Another shudder ran through the walls as Garden shed its missiles into the air. Through the shattered panes above, Seifer watched the cylinders spiral up, connecting with Galbadia's underbelly in a violent explosion whose thunder rocked his ears.

_Quistis.__ Where was Quistis?_

"Seifer! _Seifer_!" He turned to see Arya running up, blood staining her blouse and the side of her face. She grabbed ahold of his coat, and leaned in to yell. "Where are the others? Where's Zell?!"

He shook his head.

Screams from the infirmary caught his attention, and he saw Rinoa trying desperately trying to hold the crumbling walls aloft. Her angel wings floated behind her like ethereal silk. Her face was pale, sickly, severed wires still dripping from her arms. Her body shook, and he knew that her power would give out at any moment.

There was still fight left in the small sorceress…but not much.

"Watch him," Seifer told Arya, gesturing briefly to Rajin before he got to his feet. Sliding across the floor, he raced past her into the crumbling room.

Bandages were strewn everywhere, and several drawers and carts had been overturned, sliding to the side of the now angled room. Dr. Kadowaki was lying on the floor, her right leg bent at an unnatural angle and a large sliver of metal protruding from her kneecap. Blood coursed down her forehead, spilling down onto her white jacket as she tried to hoist herself back up. He reached for her, but she pointed to the cots behind her, on which two other students lay. "The patients, Seifer…" she muttered. "The patients first…."

"Seifer! I can't…hold it…." shouted Rinoa, trembling, arms threatening to give way at any moment.

"Where's Cid?" he asked, shaking Kadowaki a little to keep her conscious.

The doctor's head slumped. "Got him out…safe place...in th' cafeteria…"

Seifer looked up at the crumbling walls above him. There wasn't enough time for all of them….

A flash of gold caught his eye then, and he turned to see Zell running in, out of breath. "Get the doctor!" he shouted at the martial arts master. "I'll get these two!"

He saw Zell nod, and Seifer picked up the two semi-conscious students, trying to avoid their injuries but figuring that if he didn't touch them they were going to die anyway. He and Zell ran past Rinoa just as the young sorceress violently lowered her arms, the power drained from her limbs. The rubble tumbled down, violently, sending out a spattering of dust and pebbles that nearly bowled them over.

Rinoa fell to her knees, shaking, gritting her teeth as she forced herself to her feet again. Sweat pooled on her brow, but she reached her arms up, drawing on the sheer terror around her to summon enough energy for another spell even as she tried to maintain her balance.

"Protect! Float!" she screamed, and a green wall rose up, filtering up around the rapidly crumbling walls to form a protective sphere around their dying home and gain it a miniscule measure of buoyancy. The descent slowed, slightly, and he was able to stand again, running towards her.

Her eyes rolled back suddenly, and Seifer caught her as she fell, dragging her into the center of the floor next to Rajin, where Arya was still kneeling, tending to the other cadets beside her.

Seifer looked up at the newly exposed ceiling in time to see two more missiles ricochet off of Rinoa's newly constructed shield. The barrier trembled, but held. Seifer doubted it would survive another blow.

"**LANDING.**** PREPARE FOR IMPACT IN FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO**-"

Seifer grabbed on tight to Rajin's still form, grabbing onto another chunk of wall as Arya and another cadet gripped his arms, huddling together as a sudden roar engulfed their ears. The entire huddled mass slammed into the right wall with enough force to knock the wind out of Seifer, but the remaining structure remained mostly intact, even as smaller chunks of plaster and marble rained down below. Seifer ducked, curling his body around Rajin, Rinoa, and a crouched Arya as chunks of plaster rained down on his head and back, the roar nearly deafening-

Then nothing. A terrible, settling silence. Was he dead?

He could hear his heart hammering in his ears. Not dead, then.

He opened an eye. The floor was still beneath him…..limbs were still intact….

Balamb had landed.

Students struggled to stand, dazed, as the rubble began to clear around them and the horror began to sink in.  The large metal top had fallen slightly slanted to one side, the west wing laid open by the missile blast.

They were now an open, sitting target.

…

…

Pain in her neck, ringing in her ears- she opened her eyes to ruin and dust.

"Are you all right?" Quistis looked over to Xu, both friends flattened against the room in Cid's office. The windows were shattered and the desks and chairs in pieces against the wall. Quistis shook some of the glass out of her hair before trying to clear her head. It had all happened so fast…

Xu nodded, feeling her head. "Yeah, I…think so."

"What's the status of G. Garden?" asked Quistis breathlessly, looking around her and trying to collect herself.

Xu's eyes met hers, calm now settled into their dark depths. "Last I saw, Galbadia Garden had taken several critical hits, and is currently on the retreat."

"Can we pursue?"

Xu glanced behind her at the controls, several of which were spitting smoke and sparks. She gave a rueful laugh. "Not if Hyne was steering. However, there remains the threat in Esthar…and last reported they were advancing. The garage should be intact, although some of the vehicles-"

Quistis nodded. "I'm on my way. Settle things here, and dispatch a squadron when possible."

Xu shook her head. "Quistis, that mission is suicide. Those last radio feeds from Esthar, before they were cut off -"

"I know what they said," snapped Quistis dismissively. "And once they cut through the city, they'll head here. Stay here. Gather all our available arsenal, and pool it around the opened east side. That's where they'll be arriving. Send one-third our available force to Esthar, and keep the rest here to defend the Garden if anything else should arise. Or, if the army should make it here." She approached the com, banging it against Cid's desk when it refused to blare to life. "If nothing else, retreat back to Balamb."

"You'll just be stalling them!" replied Xu, shouting at her friend's back.

"If I _don't_ stall them, then it's already over! You and I both know that if they get here in their current numbers, it's over." Replied Quistis quietly, turning on the microphone. "Find Nida and Arya if you can and get the secondary weapons systems running again." She added, over her shoulder.

Her friend hesitated, then turned, hurrying out the door to ready the defense systems.

"Goodbye, Xu," said Quistis aloud, to no one.

…

…

…

Seifer got to his feet, still rubbing his head where it had connected with the wall. He bent over, helping Arya and Rinoa to their feet.

 _What now?_

The com crackled on again. "Attention. All persons are to evacuate B. Garden immediately until the remaining structure can be stabilized."

It was Quistis' voice, alive and determined. Relief flooded him, and he nearly fell to his knees, which he hadn't realized until now were shaking. "Exits still viable are….and the …. I repeat, exits are still viable on the East Wing. All capable SeeD's and lower class soldiers report to-"

Another explosion rocked the library, drowning out her words for a moment. "I repeat, report to Esthar through any means necessary with all ammunition available. Our soldiers there are under siege by an unknown force. The rest of the high ranking B and A class soldiers should flank the vulnerable points, and keep your posts at all costs." With a click, the transmission ended, and Seifer found himself wildly scanning the crowds for her.

Amazed, he saw the other soldiers and students begin to run towards the said exits with a sense of purpose, even if the general crowd wasn't any calmer.

And there was Quistis, pushing her way through the crowd as she attempted the incline towards the remaining wing, using her whip to pull herself up along the railing.

He saw her hoist herself up, and knew instantly that she was headed for the garage, or whatever might be left of it. She was leaving, going to Esthar to help out Squall and the others.

"Quistis!" he shouted, running towards her despite the angle that slowed him.

She looked up just as she reached for the buttons, her gaze cutting into his. They were guarded, and she looked at him for a moment, then seemed to look past him as she reached out to hit the elevator close button. Her stare did not break with his, even as the last slice of light from within faded and he was left crashing into a pair of closed doors.

Swearing, he pounded at the doors, his voice lost over the roar of chaos within Garden's quickly crumbling walls.

Frowning, he got to his feet, angrily slapping the elevator button as he buried Hyperion in the wall, hanging on for dear life as Garden lurched to the side again in an attempt to settle its weight.

She was gone, going to Esthar to throw her life away. 

_"About last night. I-"_

_A million things that she could say rose to his ears. "It was a mistake….took advantage…I don't want to see you again……"_

_He cut her off. "You offered. I accepted." He turned. "That's all." Whatever she saw in him, he wasn't it._

_End it._

_ "...I don't believe you." It was a challenge, an open challenge to turn her away, one that must have summoned most of her courage. It was here, now, at the surface of her eyes- all her pride, her fire…her butterfly wings beat fast in his hand and in his heart. "I think it was more than that…for both of us." Her eyes were beautiful…brave. Stupid. _

_She would never again summon this same strength again. She would not chase him- Quistis Trepe didn't even know how to run._

**Do it. Crush it. End it.**

_His life would be so much easier without her. No fear. No expectations. No hope. No disappointment. No sunlight. No sunburn. _

_He glared at her. "…that's what they all say." He tried to smirk, but it was empty. Cold. Something fell down the long, dark length of him, and clamored at the bottom._

_When she rushed past him, he saw the hurt in her eyes. He glanced behind him, saw her stalking down the hall, wiping her arm across her eyes with a furious swipe as students scrambled to get out of her. _

_He looked down at the floor, half expecting his guts to be spilled there in a quivering heap. He felt numb._

_Ah, yes…there was that nothingness again…cold and clean and safe._

He swore.

He was going after her.

…

…

…

The hum of the bike was distant in her ears as she shot down the road, wind biting into her arms.

She leaned into the wind, Save the Queen secured between her hands and the handle of the bike. The wind whipped at her skin, the sting harsh as she opened up the throttle as far as it would go. The bike hummed beneath her, a purr beneath her thighs as it shot like an arrow down the empty paved road to Esthar.

She only prayed she wasn't too late.

Her life stretched out along the road, a collection of seconds and heartbeats that thundered in her ears. Perhaps, in the end, that was the life of a soldier…a collection of seconds, stretched into that brief eternity that only the brave or foolish knew well. The only affirmation of life was the pounding of one's heart in one's ears, and she listened to that heartbeat now, the rush of blood in her ears that she was still alive, that she could do _something, _that it was still within her to resist this thing looming in front of her.

She could see the smoking rising from the emerald city ahead, felt dread coil in her stomach hard and unyielding as she took another violent turn and almost lost control of the bike. She leaned in to the machine, however, her entire body lunging with the sharp curves of the throbbing engine. Lowering her body to a low crouch, opening the throttle as far as it would go once again, she gripped the handles so hard it stung her beneath the gloves and flattened her body to the metal.

Smoke billowed from a collection of smoking wreckage up ahead on the entrance road, littered with bodies both down, crawling, and running towards her. A few of the men remained towards the front, and she could see a flash of black leather. Squall was among them, and alive. Thank Hyne. Garden could not sustain the loss of another leader. She could not lose her friend.

Galbadia's troops were on the move up ahead, coming from the east in what looked like a barrage of tanks and ground troops. Hundreds of them.

The Balamb army had set itself up on the outskirts of Esthar's barrier, forming a kind of curve to intercept the army. With the ratio of soldiers, however, that feeble arc would be destroyed in a matter of seconds once Galbadia's army got within range.

She continued her break neck pace down the center of the narrowing street, the Balamb soldiers scattering around her. "Help is coming!" she shouted. "Hold your ground!" The soldiers stopped their retreat and watched, awed, as one of the famous heroes of Balamb rode past them. Slowly, they began to run back into the fray.

Quistis pressed the break and jerked the bike at an angle, her thighs gripping the machine tightly as the bike rolled to a stop over the gravel. She removed her helmet and shook out her hair, then tossed the helmet behind her as she approached the battle.

Most of the junior classmen were holding, albeit barely, under the presence of the Squall. The great Lion was apparently still enough to inspire a shaking confidence in what was, presently, a doomed stronghold. Quistis ran up to the platform.

"Squall!" her first words to him in weeks. But none of that mattered now.

"Quistis." He turned to face her. "Are reinforcements on the way?"

She shook her head. "Garden's down, Squall. They shot it out of the sky. We're the last stronghold." She glanced around. "Where's Selphie?"

"She went for help." He glanced back at the battlefield. "How are the others? Rinoa?"

Quistis just shook her head. "I'm not sure, Squall."

He clenched his jaw. "Find the other squads. We'll buy some time."

Quistis noticed something just then, a distinct hunch in Squall as he braced himself against the machine gun. Blood oozed down the side of the firing cage, stemming from the cracks in his fingers. A piece of shrapnel was poking out of his side. A nasty wound, one that would soon result in unconsciousness….or worse. The shard needed to be removed.

"You idiot! You're hurt!" she shouted.

He shook his head, turning back to the field and fitting his hands into the firing handles once again. "Go back to Balamb. This is a lost battle."

She grabbed his arm, wind whipping at her face and clouding her vision. "Garden can't loose two leaders. You know that. Go back to Garden. You're needed there, not here. Rally the soldiers and form a defensive block."

He shook his head again, ignoring her as he sagged even further against the steel caging sides, another wave of blood trickling down the metal to pool on the floor. His fingers were glowing, a green shimmer. He was trying, without success, to close the wound himself.

He turned back to the junior classmen. "Retain your positions and open fire! There will be no retreat!"

The fool.

Garden's head was as good as gone. They couldn't loose its heart as well.  And that was what Squall was, whether he wanted it or not. The Lion, the heart of their army. She wouldn't lose him. Not this time.

"Squall! I'm sorry!" she screamed over the gunfire. He turned just slightly to hear what she was saying, and was rewarded by the heel of her hand driven hard into the back of his skull. "Goodbye, Squall." She murmured, looking straight into his eyes as they rolled back into their sockets. She caught him as he fell, bracing him against the sides. "Come on," she murmured, her cheek pressed against his, hands at his sides as she dug her fingers into the surrounding skin around the wound, as she had done for Seifer. It was not the most ideal form of medicine, but she had to close the wound, and it would be unwise to do so with a piece of metal still inside him. Hot blood spilled around her hands, and she dug, hoping against hope, that the shard had not gone in far.

For once, her hope paid off. Her fingers closed around the slippery slice of metal, and thanked Hyne Squall was unconscious. Otherwise, he would be screaming. She tossed the bloody, glistening metal piece behind her, and bracing herself, closed her hand around the wound. "Heal." She whispered, and braced herself for the pain.

She hissed as her arms tremored, the healing magic stemming forth and sparking along already ruptured veins in her arms and reopening the old wounds like knives in her veins. She bit the inside of her cheek, waiting for pain to fade enough to breathe again as a mixture of blood and vomit flowed between her teeth.

Not good. She choked it back.

She looked down at Squall, noting with satisfaction that the wound had closed, somewhat. The blood flow had ebbed, and the young Commander was no longer in danger of bleeding to death.

She spit a mouthful of bile over the side, and wiped a lock of hair from his forehead.

_Little brother…_

Her hands were on fire, the pain nearly maddening. Bruises were already forming across her skin, blue clouds expanding across tender white plains. She would not be able to cast again. Not today…and maybe not forever. She felt dizzy for a moment, but it soon passed. That worried her more than anything…how quickly the pain faded.

 "You!" she shouted to one terrified cadet, shifting Squall in her arms. "Come here!"

"Is he-?"

"No. Now come here." Instantly, the young man obeyed, and she lowered the wounded and heavy Squall into his hands, shouting above the fire. "Take him back to Garden. Take one of the non-military vehicles or steal one yourself. What support mag do you have?"

The cadet looked even more terrified. "None...I…I thought this would be a routine mission and I, I forgot to junction-" 

"Then draw them off me." The cadet complied, and Quistis felt a slight shudder go through her as the last of her support mag was coldly vampired from her veins, save for a few worthless spells. Protect. Holy. Nothing she was remotely capable of casting at this point.

"Cast one Cura on him every two minutes. No more, or you'll pass out as well. See that he gets to Rinoa."

The cadet nodded, the panic fading in light of purpose. Squall braced on his shoulder, he retreated, lightly jogging back towards the stationary vehicles.

Rinoa would take care of Squall. They would take care of each other.

Small trickles of cars and bikes would arrive soon, assuming the others made it out. Squall would be all right. She had to believe that.

She had to believe _something _in this madness.

She turned back to the fields, watching the enemy approach. Galbadia's advance was slow, but steady. They had a few minutes, at most. Two smaller armored vehicles with machine guns, what had to be three hundred ground soldiers with fifty of them looking to be equipped solely for support casting, if they were true to Galbadia battle form.

She looked farther up. To her horror, two Black Widows were bringing up the rear. It had taken her two full clips of ammo to rid herself of the one in Dollet years ago…and with two trucks overturned, it didn't look to be as if half that ammo would be available to devote to only two machines. She had seen men torn apart by the X-ATM092, seen flesh and blood and guts cling to the metal legs like dark mercury as the thing tore a living being to shreds in seconds. The younger cadets were watching the approach of the X-ATM092 with horror.

But the Black Widow was the least of their worries.

"Hyne help us." She murmured, beneath the roar of gunfire, knowing that whatever god existed in the heavens was no longer listening and had not been listening for some time. There were no gods of war. There were only men and their foolish pride wars and blood spilled across the earth.

She turned to the junior classmen that remained, their wide eyes screaming for direction, for purpose, for any glimmer of hope that could possibly remain between them, their ruined home, and the approaching enemy.

She would give them that hope. She had to.

She straightened up, careful to mask her expression. No despair could leak through her countenance- the cadets were too unsteady. "Brief me!" she shouted. They were second year juniors- they should know how to run basic weapon scans by now. "You, I want a scan run on that tank!"

The cadet nodded, and instantly, a sheen of magic silk rose up, the cadet's eyes flickering across the ethereal skin of information as the army advanced.

"We estimate the troops to be about three to four hundred in number," shouted one cadet. "The tank is doing the most damage, but the other trucks aren't helping, and the X-ATM's are scaring the shit out of the younger soldiers- "

She turned back, considering. This was her stronghold- the battlefield, where all things clicked into place.

The Scan cadet looked up as the magic screen faded away. "The tank is tough. It's got a kamikaze-type defense system. If…if it blows, it could level half of Esthar-"

"Trigger based or automatic!"

The cadet shook his head. "I'm not that advanced. I-I couldn't see!"

She nodded. She was not Squall…but she had to try. The sickness rose in her once more, pain surging in her arms and spreading to a painful ache in her stomach, and she paused once more to throw up over the side of the firing platform before turning back to the soldiers, who looked wholly unnerved.

"All those with advanced casting, focus attention on the ground troops. Those with long-range weapons, aim for the wheels on the armored trucks and the bellies or legs of the X-ATM092's! Take out the person behind the guns first on the trucks! After that, aim for the Healers, if you detect any! Do _not_ waste ammo! As of now, I want your most powerful magic directed at the troops and your weapons on the machines! Leave the tank to me, and don't count on reinforcements any time soon! We are the last line of defense between them and home! Do you understand?"

The tank fired, a bright energy flash that exploded into a building a hundred yards ahead of them. Concrete and blue painted steel sprayed out from the blast, some fragments skittering back to spray against Quistis' shield. She squinted, then straightened back up.

She turned quickly, to see a few cadets stagger, fear flashing in their eyes. "Hold the line!" she shouted, wiping the hair and dirt out of her eyes. "Direct all casting to the trucks and you-" she pointed to a small group of junior classmen. "Get that G-Mo off the ground and operative!"

Shouts confirmed the orders, and to her surprise, the junior classmen held, weapons and casting hands flung towards the approaching troops, which began to drop in random clumps. Six cadets were working on the fallen armored vehicle, but it didn't look promising.

"Get down!" shouted Quistis, and swiveled back again, in time to see the tank take aim once again. The large metallic head cocked back, and the clothing store behind them exploded.

"Shit!" The cadets behind her ducked, grabbing their skulls to make sure they were still attached.

We've lost too many soldiers…and these are too young…

"You!" she shouted, pointing to a tall, robust young man who carried a gunblade, dirt and blood smeared across his face. He looked shaken, but relatively steady, not more than sixteen or seventeen. "What's your name?"

"Uh, Salen, ma'am!" Blue eyes were wide, innocent…scared, but brave.

He's just a child…

"Take ten jc's and lead them up the eastern street one block over, then cut off the army midsection. Take the remaining flanker over there, and set it to auto. Unload your entire weaponry on that flanker. I want to see visible lines broken in that army formation." She ducked again as another building side collapsed, this one just fifty yards away. "Tell that cadet over there-" she pointed at a young woman, Sirri, who had been a second year junior classman when Quistis had made Instructor. "I want her to do the same on the western flank. We'll tourniquet their forces and dilute their fire. Aim for the armored trucks. Report back here once you've made the strike. If it fails, I want all Balamb troops to retreat to base and hold ground."

"But you'll be-"

_Alone_. _Unguarded.__ I'll be a target._

_That's the idea._

She stared him down. "I gave you an order! Now go!"

Nodding, the young man ran back, and she saw the two groups branch off as directed. The tank was growing closer, rolling down the emerald field, and Quistis steeled herself, teeth ground together and a deep breath escaping her lips.

_I've always been alone._

Hooking her hands through the handles, which were already slippery with blood, she opened fire on the tank. Her arms shook with the gun's kickback, but she leaned forward, bracing her feet on the slick grating. To her horror, the bullets simply ricocheted off the sides. Magic resistant _and_ bullet resistant?

_Shit_. They _built_ this thing to take out SeeDs.

She considered the enemy. With a physical _and_ a mag shield, it would only be able to run for minutes. The immense power needed to run a double shield like that would require a power source ten times the size of the tank itself…or one souped-up sorceress chained to the wheels. It had a mag-generator then, but not a physical shield. Locate the soldier generating the shield, then, and take him out.  Meanwhile, she had to count on the fact that they were probably saving the Kamakazi ability of the machine for B. Garden…and not Esthar.

The tank, having recently dispersed of a few dozen Estharian volunteer guardsmen to the left, was slowly turning towards her.

A barrage of bullets sprayed against the metal guides on either side of the gun, and she ducked underneath the shield to avoid being hit.

_My kingdom for a Guardian Force_, thought Quistis, as an onslaught of dirt choked out her sight. The moment passed.

"Get those gunners in the front!" she shouted, returning to her feet.

_Flashback, to Dollet…putting bullets in a Galbadian Black Widow, Squall running towards her, yelling…_

Where the hell was Selphie with the reinforcements?

Another discharge from the barrel of the tank and a barrage of dirt flew back in the wind, nearly flipping over the gun base. If one of those shots hit a human…there wouldn't be skin cells left to identify.

Gritting her teeth, she stayed her ground. This machine gun was their last weapon, if not their last hope. If this failed…

….Balamb's newly exposed side wouldn't stand much of a chance, not against a tank that large on an already exposed underbelly and two Black Widows that would destroy Garden from the inside out.

She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment, remembering a well-lit room with chandeliers and a uniform that itched around the collar. Opening her eyes, she recalled the words she had said under those bright chandeliers, each syllable strengthening her resolve like an iron skin.

_As a SeeD, I promise to uphold the laws and ethics of a true soldier. I will protect the peace, and all who uphold it. I will oppose injustice, and all who create it._

With a loud chink, the guiding pins settled in the tank's swivel head. The nozzle pointed at her.  Shit. She was evidently important enough to be the main target now, which didn't say much for what the Galbadian force thought of their threat as a whole.

_I will never surrender. I will protect my brothers and sisters. I will protect my home_.

She adjusted her angle, and watched another clip of bullets spray uselessly along the sides.

Quistis tried to think clearly, trying to remember back to her weapons analysis class. Galbadian tanks….slow steel structure, heavy damage capability, low mobility, fuel efficient…….

Virtually indestructible.

_…stupid Weapons Analysis class._

Cold wind prickled along her skin. A storm was coming. Thunder, and the sound of gunfire, rolled in the distance.

Quistis could hear shouting behind her as bullets sprayed across the armor. A firaga spell whizzed up the mainline, leveling a row of Galbadian soldiers. More cadets were arriving- SeeDs among them.

The tank was well within range. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a few Galbadians straggling up the hill, following the vehicle. They did not walk like soldiers. They moved stiffly, eyes focused straight ahead despite the gunfire erupting all around them, and she understood. The events of the IGCS disaster clicked into place.

These soldiers weren't normal soldiers. They weren't normal _men_. GenEve had done more than make bullets….

What had Galbadia _done_?

She watched with satisfaction as Brice, and Sirri cut their lines across, magnificent explosions following the introduction of the remaining flanker.

She focused back on the tank.

CHINK.

_Shit_.

…

…

…

"Get the _fuck_ away from me!"

Crash.

Dr. Kadowaki leaned unsteadily against the counter, trying to ease the terrible pain of her leg as Garden lurched once more, still settling.

'I said, let me the hell up, now!" Another tray tumbled over. The young man was gripping his arm, eyes frantic as he searched for his sword. Three other students were trying to keep him pinned down, to no avail.

Rinoa paced the room, wringing her hands, feverent whispers bubbling from her lips that were senseless to everyone else.  "The steel dove will fall in mirror to its master…The emerald city will be overtaken by an army of shadows..."

Squall just shook his head, once again struggling as his would-be detainers tried to start an iv in his arm. His eyes burned. "I have to get back. Just use Curaga-"

"Curaga is an emergency field administration. Magic agitates the nervous system and slows normal recovery," interrupted Dr. Kadowaki, limping forward. "You're in shock. You aren't getting it."

Another student was attempting to put stitches in Squall's side, but the young man was not cooperating. "Where's Quistis!" he shouted again, shoving the student back. Another tray overturned. "_I **said**, where the hell's Quistis_?"

Rinoa looked down at the floor, tears spilling out of her half-crazed eyes. She looked up, and her gaze was far away. "A sacrifice on Esthar's hallowed ground. The blue angel will fall-"

"_No_!" Squall's eyes narrowed as he headed towards the door, gripping his side. Blood was still seeping slowly through his fingers where the wound had reopened from all his struggling. "No! I'm going back!"

Dr. Kadowaki approached him cautiously, needle in hand. "Squall, you're in shock. You're not going anywhere."

He glanced over at her, panic and pain brimming in his eyes.  "No! I'm going back-I have to get Quistis-the others-"

The young commander was so agitated, he didn't even notice as Kadowaki quickly stuck the needle in his arm. He looked up as she stepped back, however, saw the needle, and knew. He cursed.

"I don't want a damned sedative," he insisted, even as blood poured out between his fingertips. He tried to twist to his feet, but the drug was already taking affect, and he swerved unsteadily. His legs were giving out. "Quistis…said she…said…" His eyes cleared for a moment. "I need to get back to Esthar.…Quist…"

His eyes rolled back in his head, and the young man slumped over, into Rinoa's waiting arms.

Dr. Kadowaki's expression was grim. She marveled, for a moment, at the ties that found that small band of orphanage children together. It seemed without boundaries, at times.

She held gazes with the young sorceress in front of her. "Pull yourself together and heal as many students as you can." she said, turning to search for another student in need of help.

_Quistis_…

…

…

…

"Get out of the way!"

Quistis saw the tank's head swivel, the head cock back and a blinding spray of dirt washed over her just as she ducked below the shield.  She stumbled back, trying in vain to block herself from the rocks and dirt that pummeled into her face from the sides. Dazed, she kept her grip on the handle with her other hand to avoid being thrown back with the force. She grimaced, but amazingly, felt each limb intact.

_They missed. Thank Hyne.  _

But not by much.

She opened her eyes only to find that her glasses were askew, broken by the stray rocks. The glass lay haphazardly in the frames, glass distorting the now blood soaked lenses into a strange cut glass window.

She ripped off her glasses and shook her head, trying to clear her vision. Gritting her teeth, she resumed her mental mantra, staring out at the sea of approaching soldiers. The urge to retreat was strong...there were so many…

"Hold your ground, Trepe." She muttered. "Hold your ground."

_I will defend my honor and the honor of my comrades. For honor, for peace, and for the lives of my brothers and sisters, I will give my life….._

The field was an emerald blur intermixed with blood, a blur writhing with shouts and screams. She could just make out the outline of the tank- the dark of the barrel and the moving silver tracks. Stunned, she shook her head, once again retaining a clear vision of the field.

More enforcements had arrived, a trickle of bikes and mismatched vehicles that looked worse for wear. Junior classmen and advanced SeeDs poured from them, running towards her. She directed them with one hand on the guns, firing, and her other hand waving wildly.

"Hold the lines! I want a group of ten to corner right and station by the front gates and another line supporting the Estharian guards-" An explosion sounded just to the right of her, felling another building with a thunder that shook the earth itself. "_I said hold the lines! _Now go! Get that G-MO on auto-drive and batter it, **now**!" 

She turned her gaze back to the battlefield. Galbadia was still advancing, their numbers diminished, but not nearly exhausted.

Again, she turned back to the machine gun, fitting her left hand into the firing clasp. The lines were holding….barely. They would not hold much longer. Esthar was a lost battle.

Biting her lip, she braced herself at the machine, cold slippery steel between her fingers.

"In darkness, I will find light. In darkness, I will _be_ light." She whispered, finishing the last of the oath she had uttered so long ago.

It couldn't get much darker.

…

…

…

Seifer dismounted the bike, stumbling as the tires caught in the mud. Esthar's silver city was engulfed in smoke and flame behind the battlefield, the turquoise structures and highways smoking in the distance. On the way, he'd helped to run a G-Mo out of the mud, and was now logged down by dirt and rainwater from the storm that had followed him here, now rumbling behind him. His black trench coat was soaked with mud, and he ripped it off, casting it onto the ground.

The field that led into the city was similarly scorched; the snow and grass beneath had turned a glaring black. Seifer turned, searching for the current battlefield.

He traced the activity up to the center of the battle, where two other Balamb forces were now being assisted in tying off the army in the center while one small force remained behind. Further into the city, warning sirens were sounding amidst the commotion, and smoke was rising in the center. From the right side of the field, he could see the flash of a summons. Selphie?

The great city Esthar had fallen…Laguna was going to have one hell of a mess on his hands when the smoke cleared.

_Where the hell was Quistis?_

Breaking into a jog, Seifer headed towards the front of the line, Hyperion drawn. He arrived just in time to see the gunner turn back and scream at the cadets that surrounded the vehicle, watching them retreat back. The tank was preparing to fire again. The tank was advancing with surprising speed, leading the army's progression. The cadets were still firing and casting, dropping Galbadian soldiers in clumps. He recognized the make of the tank, although several modifications had been made to the structure. It was a kamikaze model, one that was going to take out a good fifty mile radius if it exploded.

And they were right in the middle of it. _Shit_.

The gunner was standing ground and opening up the guns as fast as they could shoot, although the fire didn't seem to phase the tank in the slightest. The gunner was either a hero, or a fool. 

Most likely both.

Off to the side, a group of SeeDs was trying to get a tanker operational, and further up the line, Balamb's forces were fighting admirably, tourniqueting the Galbadian army further up the line. He could see the armor of the Estharian soldiers from the left flank, and, squinting, thought he saw the familiar forms of Laguna and Selphie charging into the fray from one far corner of the field.

It was not going to be enough.

He kept running, squinting as the figure on the platform came more clearly into focus. Blonde hair, slim figure braced against the curved platform's shattered shields as the golden bullet casings rained down at booted feet….

_Quistis_.

The tank was aiming…

**…right for her…**

…

…

…

"Damnit!" She squeezed the trigger, trying to aim for the large, incoming grey blur. The clip was rapidly emptying, and the tank was rolling closer. Shells dropped like glass at her feet, the hot shells kissing the tips of her boots as they clambered to the ground.

Up the field, she saw an ATM get ahold of one of Balamb's soldiers, tossing him like a rag doll. The other cadets around him were firing, screaming, but the machine continued, ripping flesh and sinew as if spinning a web.

Quistis drew her handgun from her belt, and, waiting for a clean shot, she did what the younger cadets had not learned to do.

She shot the soldier in the head.

It was over immediately. What was left of the soldier slumped in the machine's metallic jaws, and with another well-placed shot to the metallic joint of the right leg, the ATM sunk to one metallic leg, bolt spells sparking through its body as the rest of the cadets finished it off. But the diversion had cost Quistis precious time.

The tank once again clambered, internal machinery aligning for another shot. "Get back!" she ordered what few cadets remained, who were attempting to flank the gunning platform, shield spells glowing, in an effort to protect her. Those same shield spells would shatter like glass in a single hit.

They hesitated, clearly unsure of her orders. "I said get back!" she screamed at the remaining cadets. "I'm ordering the retreat!"

The students hesitated.

Another blast of fire blew through the lines, however, and any resistance was quickly replaced with panic. They startled. Their shields would not hold one second against the tank's barrage of fire.

This battle was over. There need be only one casualty.

"RETREAT TO BASE!" she screamed, before turning back. "**NOW**!" The students skittered back, faces awash with blood and gunfire. They would never be children again. They would never be quite human again, either.

And herself?  She had never been a child. Perhaps she had never been human at all.

The battlefield loomed before her, wind stinging her cheeks. This was her familiar.

Only a few more bullets….

The shield around the tank faltered suddenly, then faded completely. Triumph soared in Quistis- this was the lucky break she had been counting on. The soldier generating the shield was dead. She had a moment, just a moment, if she could hit it-

It was then, amidst her jubilation, that she remembered the scan. The tank was a kamikaze. Even if she could take it down, the tank would explode, leveling the field and everything in it.

_The others…._

_I have to protect the others…_

She was almost out of time. Rain began to tremble down, wet against her cheeks and dribbling into her mouth.

No time…..no time…..

Something lurched in her hands, biting hard back against her palms and she was thrown backwards, sprawled in the mud and her hands aching.

The gun had jammed.

"Damnit!" she scrambled back to her feet and approached the gun, whose metal sizzled in the rain. Grabbing one of the handles, she swung the gun around, and kicked hard just below the front barrel. She nearly lost her balance, but she persisted, kicking as hard as she could at the bottom, where the shell casings had jammed.

There was a time she would have retreated, counted her losses and returned to Balamb to hold the last lines. She would not have held her ground and kicked at a G-Mo gun to get it operational…it was like kicking a dead dog. As a self-proclaimed military tactician first and a hero last, she would have laughed at her current endeavor as a foolish attempt to become immortal and followed the retreat herself. But now, searching her heart, she could find no reason to. It was an empty echo in her chest where once she found conviction. Instead, there was a fierce desperation in her, one she didn't understand but surrendered to.

The tank had not slowed its approach, but now appeared to be playing with the only gunner that stood between it and a belly-up Garden.

"Come on!" Another swift kick from her boot, and a river of shells spilled out, and she quickly swiveled the gun back around to its former position. But the time had cost her.

"**Be light**," she whispered fiercely, watching the cadets reluctantly retreat.

She felt the hot liquid burn of fear and the fire of adrenaline rush to her head and her limbs. Instinct tremored in her legs, and the urge to run was strong, stronger than the urges inspired and molded by her training as a SeeD if only by a sliver. It was her instinct, however, that held her solid; that kept her between her enemy and her home. It was love that held her to her duty.

_Protect at all costs_.

Death was here. She knew it, sensed it in the way a bird knows its direction home. It was a prickle of instinct, cold against her skull.

Quistis steeled her trembling hands, gazing into the dark eye of the tank and accepting death as she had been taught- as she taught others to do. Coldly, calmly, as if death were an approaching wave and she a grain of sand waiting on the shore to be swallowed.

Squinting straight down the mouth of the tank, Quistis swiveled the tripod and squeezed the triggers. She felt as if she were falling forward, as if there were a great rush around her, and all time was rushing, rushing towards her-

"Protect!" she whispered, closing her eyes. She felt the word leave her lips, and knew it would be her last. She called out the spell even as the pain, the unimaginable pain surged through her veins, the white hot agony splitting her arms as the burning magic erupted and she screamed, but the sound was silent even to her-

And she _flew_.

She gasped for breath as the distant roar approached, and it was as if that breath stretched on forever, winding back and plummeting into a dark infinity that took her down into Nothing. The air around her seemed to shatter, sound and sight breaking apart into a million slivers embedded into her skin. She flew like a dove, weightless, wings laid open on a wave of light, and the pain was gone-

_Beautiful light…_

She did not feel the fall.

…

…

…

He'd never run so fast in his life. It was as if his legs had detached from his body, and he could not feel the ground beneath him. Students ran past him, shouting the retreat, but he ignored them, barreling through the crowd and nearly getting knocked down more than once. Panic seized him.  "**_Quistis_**!!"

No time…_no time_…

 He saw the tank's head cock back once again, fire……

Then explode. The soldiers threw themselves down on their bellies as a brilliant fire flash ballooned out on the field, hands over their ears as the deafening rumble followed the ring of light. He was nearly knocked backwards, shielding his face from the piercing light, a force so bright it seemed to _hum_. The ground shook, and the surrounding army fell to their knees. Shrapnel sparks and flame fanned out to flatten a hundred yard radius of Galbadian soldier and grass, billowing out to destroy them all-

Then stopped.

Seifer opened his eyes to see a flashing green light, throbbing with the force of the material inside it, the green bubble a blinding sheen against the metal and rain. The energy of the spell was warm, calming- time seemed to slow as the particles form the tank collected like magnetic shards against the shield. Protect hovered in front of him, a more powerful Protect spell than he had ever seen before in his life. He traced the casting radius…

Quistis had cast it.

_Impossible_.

Just as the bubble had expanded, it faded, and the blast inside it appeared to fizzle out as the metal and dirt and grass fell to the ground, sizzling lifelessly in the rain. Seifer stared. There was nothing left.

The platform had been obliterated.

And something turned off inside of him, like a light switching off in the back of his head. Dark…_dark_…**_dark_**….

Seifer jerked his head up as the dust settled once again. 

"_Quistis!!__ **Quistis**!!"_

Rising amidst the confusion and the chaos, was the sound of a heart breaking.


	31. Retributions

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Esthar's siege idea is on loan from the wonderful and talented Lunatique. (read her stuff! It's excellent!) The idea of phoenix down used in a field medicine sense is in part due in thanks to xahra99 (another very talented author- go read her works!).  While I'm on the subject, I highly recommend that anyone bothering to read my lil' ol' story also check out the stories under my 'favorites' section. These are very talented authors, and I really think a lot of them don't get enough credit!

Author's Note: Thanks again to all you readers, reviewers, AIM buddies, and my webmistresses. You guys are wonderful.

Without further ado, I give you Chapter 28.

Liberi Fatali- Roughly Translated and shamelessly added to by (me):

Wake from your dream my children

_There is no cradle_

_Wake up from your dreams, fated children_

_The dream is not going_

_Arise_

_Discover the truth of the garden_

_Through the thorns to the stars_

_the__ same night awaits us all_

_Shadow passes, light remains_

Open your eyes

_See_

**See and believe**

_Burn with truth_

_Scorch the world of evil_

Burn with truth

_Set fire to the world of darkness_

_Goodbye children_

_From the days of destiny_

_-Squaresoft (mostly)_

Chapter 31

_Excitate vow e somno, liberi mei                             _

_Cunae__ non sunt       _

**A little boy waving from the perch of a tree, his auburn hair hanging in his eyes, his smile ferocious as the sunlight-                      **

_Excit__ vow e somno, liberi fatali,                              _

_Somnus__ non eat                                                       _

A little brunette on the shore, shrieking as the waves chased her feet, the wind dancing in her hair and carrying her laughter for miles-

_Surgite_

_Invenite__ hortum veritatis         _

Two dark-haired children, a boy and a girl, sitting in the tall grass, hiding from the wind as it stirred the flaxen fields, whispering to the sky-                               

_Per aspera ad astra,                                               _

_ omnes una magna nox_

A little girl wading in the water, her sun-bleached hair whipping her cheeks as she gazed out at the waves, a fierce look in her water-blue eyes-

_Transit umbra, lux permanet                                  _

Pateface oculos tuos."                                       

**A little blonde-haired boy, pants rolled as he squatted in the creek, face knit in consternation as the crabs eluded him-**

_Vide                                                                         _

Vide et credere                                                        

**Another little boy, sitting alone on the sand dunes, his knees pulled up to his chest and a fierce, determined look set in his young green eyes-**

_Ardente__ veritate                                                       _

_Urite__ mala mundi                                                    _

**Her children, standing in lines, uniforms crisp and tight around their collars, eyes set with new determination-**Ardente ceritate                                                      

_Incendite__ tenebras mundi                                        _

Her children, trapped in the arms of war, shrapnel in their skin and firefight all around them, holding on to one another as the world crumbled around them-

_Valete__, liberi,                                                           _

_Diebus__ fatalibus                                                      _

Edea sat alone by the cafeteria window, glass and plaster scattered everywhere, shouts echoing from within.

"Wake up, Cid. They're dying." She whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks as she squeezed her husband's hand. "Our children are dying."

…

…

…

Dust was still settling across the battlefield, a whisper of sand and sound that faded in a rolling cloud. Balamb and Esthar soldiers were getting to their feet, dazed and bloodied. Balamb's retreat had ended, and Galbadia's assault had stopped. Now, those that remained stared with disbelief at the scene around them, as time finally settled to a standstill.

Selphie's world was still reeling as she scanned the battlefield, looking for signs of life. Adrenaline still coursed through her, marking her hands tremor. The storm was picking up, and fat rain pellets splattered against their skin.  Her skin was still tingling from her summon of Bahamut, and buzzing, her mind still sparking with adrenaline, she ran through the rubble, searching for her friends. The scenery was a blur of metal and blood, and she searched for movement, for anything-

The field was beginning to stir all around them, the murmur of voices and the groan of machinery once again creaking to life, but the middle of the field was silent and still. Selphie's pace picked up as she neared the platform where Quistis had stood.

"Quistis!" shouted Selphie, dropping to her knees furiously clawing at the wreckage. Serabin was behind her, also tearing through the still smoldering ruins. Other students milled around her, searching the battlefield for the lone gunner. Dust, still swirling around them, was quickly tampered down by the heavy downpour. The storm had reached them.

"Selphie!" shouted Irvine, jogging towards them. The rush of relief at seeing Selphie was still overshadowed by the absence of their other friends.

Far to the left of the main battlefield and occupied with trying to restart one of the large Esthar defense tankers whose engine had been fogged with mud, Irvine had turned to see Quistis' intent too late. He watched the tank head turn, watched his friend brace herself against the firing platform and open up the guns, then-

**Chaos**.

The platform exploded, and with it, the green light had expanded, quite possibly saving them all. Irvine had felt the heat of the spell on his face, warm and familiar, saw the shards of metal and glass stop midair, and simply fall like feathers. He had never seen death so close before, or so still. He could have reached out and touched his own destruction, if he had not been frozen in shock.

Up ahead, the tank's remains still smoked and sizzled in the falling rain. Without the firepower, the remaining Galbadians would have stood little chance of penetrating even a damaged Garden. Just as Balamb and Esthar's forces had pressed the impending retreat, however, they had soon found it unnecessary. Galbaldia's remaining army had dropped as soon as the tank had exploded. Just…dropped, as if it had been an army of puppets and the strings had been cut loose.  No Galbadian soldier stirred across the field, but Balamb's remaining cavalry was sifting through it, just to make sure.

Selphie caught his gaze as she glanced around, desperately, worry choking her ability to think. His first thought was relief that she was still intact, but that joy was brief. 

"Quisty!" she shouted, barreling forward and grabbing his hand. "Irvine, we have to find her!"

Even as he nodded, Irvine was seized by the brief panic that he did not **want** to find her…or what was left of her.

_No one could have survived that explosion…_

Still, Irvine braced himself, dropping to his hands and knees as he, too leaned his weight against the gigantic truck, gripping the platform and grimacing as he lifted. "Quistis!" he shouted, normally calm hands now frantic and fumbling. The hot metal cut through his gloves, singeing his skin, but he held on.

"Stand back." They turned; it was Glyphias's voice behind them. There was a sick, nervous look to his eyes, his face and jacket awash with splatters of blood. Irvine and Selphie reluctantly stopped their futile struggle with the two-ton wreck, and stepped back just as Serabin, his face awash with blood and dirt, raised shaking hands. "Float."

What remained of the platform groaned as it lifted, the metal sizzling in the rain. Deep smoldering ruts were carved in the steel where the blast had burned. Irvine resisted the urge to look away. There would be nothing left, but if there was…he didn't think he could take it.

He forced himself to look, and a golden flutter caught his eye. He followed the movement to a piece of metal protruding from the ground a few feet from the platform.

It was a piece of golden hair, fluttering in the wind.

…

…

…

Pain woke him- the dull stabbing sensation buried in his side.

_Esthar__….Lost stronghold…..Quistis.__ Get back to Esthar._

Squall grimaced as he sat up too quickly, gripping his side. Pain there, and the sharp sensation of stitches against his fingertips. The lights swam before him, hazy in the half-dark. There were shouts, scrapes- the noises stung his ears.

"Move the cart….get that up, get it hoisted..."

"We need help over here! We're losing another one!"

Squall gripped his skull and willed the sensations to become still and sensible.

A cadet was at his side at once. "Commander! You're awake!" The soldier touched his chest and bowed, remembering his manners even in crisis.

Squall winced at the loud echo the soldier's shout caused as the room swam into view.

_Rinoa_.

"Rinoa…where is Rinoa?"

"Outside….helping to prop up the eastern flank….I could send for her…"

_She's all right. Thank Hyne._

 "Never mind. What news from Esthar?"

The cadet nodded. "The Galbadian army is fallen, sir. Esthar and Balamb tend the wounded."

"Give me the estimates."

"Roughly 600 slain on Galbadia's behalf, and Balamb's count is as of yet unsure. Esthar has no reports yet, sir."

_Heavy casualties, then._

"How was the battle ended?" he asked, wearily.

"Sir. SeeD class A destroyed the Galbadian tank with a type-2 G-mo armored truck. The tank's Kamikaze effect was quelled by powerful magic- a class alpha-one defense shield, sir. Galbadia…surrendered, in effect."

But who had the capability to cast that? No one but Rinoa. Quistis had severe mag-poisoning- her limit breaks would be disabled due to inability to channel a strong mag-current. Selphie, perhaps. "Who-"

"SeeD Trepe, sir."

"That's…impossible."

The cadet, looking flustered, shrugged. "These are my reports, Commander, from SeeD Tilmitt."

"SeeD Trepe's condition?"

"Unknown, like the others, sir."

Squall ran a hand through his hair, ice in his belly.

_When he had left her, victory was impossible…retreat imminent…_

"What would you have me do, sir?"

"What?"

"What would you have me tell the soldiers, Commander? They await orders."

Squall stood, willing the pain in his side to fade so that he could think straight.  "Get Ci-"

_Cid is gone. _

He rubbed at his scar. "Salvage all supplies from the medbay and set up a stable med-post. Assemble all able-bodied cadets. I want all salvageable weapons taken care of, and I want an estimate. I want the best tech support we have readying the Ragnarok. I want to know if she'll fly, and if not, how long until she will. I want a crude com-link set up to Esthar, and I want Loire on the line. Report back to me when all of this is accomplished."

 "Sir."  The cadet bowed, and turned to carry out the orders. A capable cadet, that one. What was the young man's name? Girrin?  No matter.  Time for promotion later. There was work to be done.

Irvine, Selphie, Zell…Quistis. They were all out there….

Later. He would think of it later. 

He felt the Headmaster's yolk settle onto his shoulders, and it was as if someone had just placed the world upon his back.

_Or a Garden._

…

…

…

"Quistis!"

Irvine lunged towards the golden gleam, glimpsing with horror a human hand curled beneath a large metal shard. Yelling and tearing at the metal scraps, he began to uncover the wreck.

"Hurry **up**," hissed Serabin, his arms shaking. "This thing isn't light, Kinneas."

"Selphie!" he shouted, and at once the petite brunette was at his side, hauling up the heavy metal slab that was all that remained from the truck's hood. The pair tipped it over with a heavy clang, and Selphie gasped, placing shaking hands over her mouth.

"Oh Hyne…"

Quistis lay sprawled out on the ground, hands and legs splayed out and bloody. The truck's hood was the only thing that had kept her from being crushed in the rubble, but though intact, the sight was nothing pleasant. Small metal filings were embedded in her palms, face, and arms.  It seemed that the shards and shrapnel that her Protect spell had spared them from had not been as kind to her.

Her eyes were closed, lips slightly parted as a mixture of blood and rain poured over the red shining surface of her mouth. Her blonde hair was stained a diluted red, and hung in matted, wet clumps around her face. Trembling, Irvine turned her skull slightly to the side. A head wound, a nasty one, was gushing blood. Her uniform was in tatters, and what remained of it was soaked in blood and rain.

The creamy surface of her wrists had been split down the center, pouring blood out of her body with every feeble beat of her heart.  The last time her veins had channeled the spell, the magic had split her open.

Irvine had half expected to find not Quistis, but parts of her. Still, he couldn't quell the bile in his throat at the sight of what remained of his friend.

Lifting her as gently as he could, Irvine moved her over to another patch of blackened grass, gingerly laying her down. Swearing, Serabin released the spell, his arms shaking. The truck crashed back into place with a thunder that shook the immediate ground beneath them.

Serabin looked over his shoulder, where the other soldiers were quickly gathering the wounded. "Check her vitals. One full dose of p.d., then one curaga every five minutes once a heart rhythm is established," he said quickly. "I'm going to get a truck operative."  Irvine vaguely remembered Glyphias' status as an Advanced Field Medic.

Selphie acknowledged him with a quick nod.

Ripping off his gloves and throwing them aside, Irvine pressed his fingers to Quistis' throat. Nothing. Just the cool press of skin.  "No pulse."

This couldn't be right. Quistis couldn't die.

"No." Selphie shook her head, and knelt forward to open up her already torn uniform, pressing her fingers over her friend's sternum. Irvine put his hands on Quistis' bare neck, and at Selphie's nod, sent a full dose of phoenix down through her system- twice- despite Serabin's advice to start at a lower dose. 

The move was dangerous-pure phoenix down without another spell dilution would kill a breathing person. Too much and her heart would burst…

…but Quistis was not breathing.

Selphie hummed next to him, but the sound was not her voice. It was the sound of Curaga, a flush that made the caster's cells sing with the energy. It had always reminded Irvine of a vibrating bell, low and sweet against the skin. Selphie's hands were on Quistis' skull, trying desperately to close the head wound. The wound remained as it was, however, deep and bloody, the white of her skull almost visible beneath clots of blood and hair.

Only living cells could respond to magic…

Selphie uttered a strangled cry, and called up the spell again. "Quisty! Come _on_!"

Irvine leaned down, and forcing her jaw open, breathed twice, listening to the rush of air echo hollowly through her chest. Her lips were cold against his. He shook his head, hysteria rising in him like a rushing tide. This couldn't be. It just couldn't be.

"Hyne, no.." he murmured, tears burning in his eyes. "No…"

"Again." Ordered Selphie, and the two pressed their foreheads together on either side of Quistis' still form, and once again, their friend's body arched under the flood of energy, before slumping back to earth.

Irvine's fingers grappled at her throat for a pulse, and once again shook his head. Nothing.

"One more time." whispered Selphie, tears welling in her eyes. "One more time."

"She's gone, Selphie. Just…stop it." Irvine just knelt in the mud, and continued to shake his head, hopelessness shuddering in his heart. A hard slap at his cheek made him look up into Selphie's furious face.

"Don't you say that, Irvine Kinneas!" shouted Selphie, tears brimming in her eyes and the rain matting her hair to her face as she shook him by the collar. Desperation lingered there. "Don't you say it! I said _again_!! Do it **again**!" Selphie's voice bordered just short of hysterics. Selphie's face was smeared with blood and dirt, and she had a wild, almost feral look in her eyes, almost daring him to refuse her.

Shaking his head, once again Irvine murmured to himself and his fingers stiffened, the radiation from Phoenix down's presence warming against Quistis' cold skin.

Nothing.

Irvine slumped back, burying his face in his blood-soaked hands, a low, anguished moan breaking from his lips.

Selphie looked down at her friend, tears cascading down her face.

_Live, Quisty. Please live._

So suddenly that it startled the pair of them, a breath burst from Quistis' lips, eyes snapping open as her hands fisted at her sides, body arching up as if stuck by raw current. She opened her mouth wide, gasping for breath as if she had been underwater for an eternity. Her arms spasmed, and she clenched her fists, eyes widening as she stared up at the sky. Her legs kicked out, boots splattering the mud beneath her.

Selphie burst into happy sobs, kneeling down to embrace her friend, and Irvine sat back on his haunches, allowing a shuddering breath to escape his lips.

Quistis' eyes struggled to focus, her mouth gasping for air even as she choked on blood. Irvine's stomach shrank as he saw the pain in her expression, then clenched as Quistis forced another torn breath through her lungs. Her eyes, darting around, settled on Irvine for the barest of moments, but there was no recognition in her gaze.

"Mar-" she choked, before slumping in Selphie's arms, hand dropping back to her side.

"Quistis!" shouted Irvine, shaking her. She had passed out from the pain.

Seifer Almasy approached, running faster than Selphie had ever seen a person run. He was out of breath, the look in his eyes stricken. He too, was covered in mud and rain, Hyperion's blade loose at his side.  He dropped it upon seeing her. "Is-she-"

"She's still breathing." Said Selphie, trying to remain calm in the face of the young man's distress when her own sanity was balanced on a thread. Seifer looked almost crazy. "We have to get her back."

Seifer gazed back at her, looking furious and ghostly pale all at once. "Back to where? Back to Garden? Are you insane? It's split _apart_!"

Selphie blanched. "It…what?"

"There's nothin' closer!" returned Irvine, grabbing Almasy's jacket and shaking him. "Galbadian missiles have taken out half th' city, Almasy, and she's lost a lotta blood. We're taking her back to Garden!"

But Selphie was staring down. "I think she's stopped breathing again."

The three instantly slipped back down into the mud, Selphie grasping at Seifer and Irvine's hands. Irvine tore the remnants of Quistis' jacket open, revealing bloody flesh quickly splattered clean by the downpour.

"Hold on to me!" she ordered, grabbing their hands, which were slippery with blood and rain.

"Draw, Curaga!" Seifer felt his arm jerked forward, then back, the magic quickly drained from his body and pooled into Selphie's. His hands burned between the two SeeD's and he stared helplessly down at Quistis' limp form, gasping for breath as Selphie reached out her hands and violently poured the magic into her friend's body with a blow to the sternum. It was the field transfer equivalent of shock paddles…Curaga cast exponentially was meant only to be administered as a last resort.

Seifer recognized the procedure- after all, it was Quistis that had taught it to him. He watched, numbly, as Selphie struck Quistis hard in the breastbone again, summoning the gathered energy to spark a white ball of energy that caused Quistis' entire body to bow back, then slump back down again.

There, on his knees in the mud, Seifer said the first and only prayer in his life.

Selphie's hand squeezed his. "Again."

Selphie drew a shuddering breath and cast again, and the sensation was painful to Seifer, thundering, as if his skull would shatter at any moment. Selphie was drawing hard, out of desperation, endangering all their lives in the process. Drawing was a delicate process, and Selphie, in her grief, was drawing more than magic…she was drawing life.

_Please_…

Quistis' body bowed back once more, a labored breath breaking from her lips as her body collapsed back into the wet earth. She fumbled, flailed; her fingers dug hard into their arms, and they gripped her back as hard, trying to anchor her in the world of the living.

_Thank Hyne._

"Get her to the trucks. Hurry, before she stops breathin' again!" Irvine's voice.

Seifer shook, gently slipping his arms under Quistis' body and quickly hauling her up against his chest. He stood, the rain beating his hair down into his eyes and washing the blood off of her skin as he looked down at her, shaking, her head slumped back and bleeding, her wrists a bloody, mangled mess.

Selphie sat on her hands and knees in the mud, desperately trying to catch her breath. Irvine helped her up, arms strong beneath her, and dazed, she looked up at the picture before her.

Seifer was holding her, looking as lost as she had ever seen him. For the first time in her life, Selphie felt a twinge of pity for the ex-knight, a stray afterthought that stemmed from her own grief.

The sight of her pierced him. Her hands dangled at her side, her mouth slightly open. Metal was embedded in her cheeks and hands, and shreds remained of her uniform, which was blood stained and burned. This was not Quistis Trepe. It couldn't be. He pressed his forehead against hers, willing her awake.

She stirred the minute he touched her, and her lids cracked, revealing a swirling green iris, unfocused and bewildered.

_Poison__.__ Mag poisoning…the final stage._

**_No_**…

"Sei…" She grimaced, eyes flickering like a broken projector. Blood seeped through her teeth. A small smile was tugging at the corner of her lips. "Seifer." Her voice sounded very small.

She was delirious.

A small red trickle of blood escaped the corner of her mouth, pooling onto his coat. There was so much blood….

"Don't talk, Quistis. I'm taking you home."

"Hokmeh," she repeated. The blood in her mouth clouded her speech. Her hand traveled up, shaking, fingertips reaching just short of his cheek. She drew a deep breath, and he thought she was going to say more. Instead she started coughing again, and a spray of blood peppered his jacket.

"Quistis, stay with me…"

But she only smiled at him, her hand dropping down to swing loosely at her side, her eyes once again rolling up into her skull.

"No, Quistis!" He shouted, and for a brief moment, held her close to him in the rain. Her pulse beat lethargically beneath her skin, and she was shivering. "Damnit!"

She was dying in his arms, the same way his mother had.

Not again…

"Curaga," he murmured, pressing his hand against her forehead. His body tensed, and the spell traveled to his palm, cool against his skin as it hummed against her cheek. 

_"Dance with me."_

The skin glowed for a moment under the energy of the spell, then faded away. Nothing. Seifer grimaced, then summoned the spell again. Nothing. No…that wasn't the answer. It was the magic that was killing her. Injecting more into her system was only making her worse.

_"You offered. I accepted. That's all."_

He placed his hand over her chest. It was a gamble, but it was better than nothing. "Draw."

His arm tremored, and the magic surged through him like tiny knives in his veins.  He hissed, resisting the urge to snatch away his hand, but kept it pressed there, against her flesh. Nausea swept through him, followed by a sharp pain that procured a film of bile in his mouth. He gagged.

So this is what she felt…a fraction of it.

"Draw." He whispered again, and instantly felt intensely sick to his stomach. It wasn't separate magic he was absorbing, but a cocktail of hemorrhaged spells that had no real definition but ran through the body like a sharp, homogenous poison. Pure energy. He choked back a wave of vomit that suddenly surged in his throat.

How did Quistis stand it?

He ran through the storm, her dead weight straining his arms and the wound in her head pouring warm blood against his coat. He couldn't see if Selphie and Irvine were behind him, and he didn't care. The remaining soldiers loaded up one of the remaining vehicles, piling their wounded onto the flat backs. Seifer watched, helpless. They were going too slow, there wasn't enough fucking time-

"Get on." Said one of the young men, gesturing.  Serabin, wasn't it? "We have room for one more. Hurry."

He climbed on the back, cradling her in his arms like a child. Squeezing his eyes shut, he whispered the command again.

"Draw."

Each word was an act of love…each command to feel her pain, to take it from her.

Two young men leaned over him, quickly winding compresses onto her arms and head, washing hi-potion over the wounds. Soaked with rain and the bright stain of her blood, he stroked her hair, telling her to her to stay awake, feeling as if every raindrop was hammering him down into the earth.

…

…

…

"Arya, go mix me some more of that saline solution, .1M. Zell? I'll need some more gauze and tourniquet strips. Brasi, Jourdan, and Neelee, I want you to go and change the dressings on every bandage, and make sure the wounds are breathing properly. Has anyone seen Squall?"

Dr. Kadowaki wiped beads of exhaustion from her face and leaned heavily against a makeshift table. Tarps had been drawn all along Garden's newly opened side to keep out the rain, and were barely holding. In the commotion, she had set her own leg with what limited supplies had been recovered from the medbay, given herself a generous dose of morphine, and was now hobbling around on a staff provided by one of the students.

All three of the early med trainees, for better or worse, had been recently upgraded to temporary doctors. What remained of the library had been cleared out and converted into a makeshift hospital, a line of mattresses propped up against the rows of fallen bookshelves. It was the best she could do, for now.

She looked around, the ground before her littered with blankets, soldiers, and bloody gauze. She hadn't seen that kind of carnage since Adel's coming. Shaking her head, she turned back to a young man with a broken radius.

Arya approached, bearing sealed bags of saline and a handful of syringes. "Zell is still digging out the medbay with the others. We should have more supplies soon."

The doctor nodded, leaning on the staff as she looked over her shoulder. "Set his arm in a sling, and make sure it's tight to his body. I've already given him some pain meds. They'll just have to hold till we get this place back up and running."

She'd been saying that all day. The walls will hold. This tourniquet will hold. The electricity will hold. And, in truth, she had no doubts that Garden would be back and running eventually.

It was the spirits around her that she was worried about…and they seemed to be fading.

The dead had been pulled out and laid under blue tarps by the garage. Some students simply sat by the huddled forms of their loved ones, gazing blankly at the walls. Others sobbed, or called for lost friends, lifting up the plastic sheets only to find a different body lying there. Her heart went out to them, but there was nothing that could be done for the dead, now- she had to focus on the world of the living.

Her eye caught on one particular movable cot that stood towards the back of the room, where the more seriously injured patients lay. Makeshift batteries and generators had been made, and the monitors and machines were all hooked up to one particularly large g-mo battery, maintained by the more adroit casters.  Medteams from Balamb had responded to Garden's distress call and were on the way, but it would be hours before they arrived.

One bed in particular stood out in the mess. A young man stood by the cot, arms folded as he gazed down at the heart monitor. He had been standing there for the past five hours, watching the electronic jump of the pulse against the dark screen. His entire vest was covered in blood, but judging from the rigidity of his form and the healthy gleam in his eyes, none or little of it was his.

He had carried her in, soaked to the bone with rain with Quistis wrapped in a jacket, arms limp at her sides. As soon as he had handed her over to one of the med-trainees, he collapsed, immediately throwing up till there was only blood and bile on the ground in front of him. The fool had attempted to absorb Quistis' mag-poisoning, a dangerous move that had bought her a few more hours, at most.

The girl was fading, fast, and Seifer was intensely fortunate that his heart had not exploded.

The doctor hobbled over, grimacing as she did so. Green eyes met hers before shifting back to the heart monitor. He had been staring at it for the last few hours, as if his vigilance would guarantee her heartbeat. He had taken out his own IV long ago.

"Is she going to make it?" he asked dully, his eyes glazing over, as if already protecting himself from the response. He still looked pale from his recent round of vomiting, and his nose had started bleeding again.

Kadowaki leaned over checked the dressing, and made sure the stitches were holding properly. The gash, thank god, had not damaged the skull, but the girl had suffered a major concussion, and lost a considerable amount of blood. The blood, however, was not the doctor's first concern. A transfusion from Irvine had restored her lost supply…but it had changed nothing. Quistis was still in a coma.

"She's still got poison in her system." Said the Kadowaki, grimly, stroking Quistis' hair back from her face. "It's not a compound that I've ever seen before, and until I can run some more tests on it I can't be sure for certain what effects it may have. My only guess is that the pulse ammo from that tank carried some sort of poison coupling in the blasts, or that it's a new hybrid formed from the sheer amount of mag poisoning in her system."

"The IGCS tower incident had the some sort of mag-coupling on their bullets," replied Seifer, never taking his eyes off of Quistis. "Why won't she wake up?"

"Some of the other soldiers have poison in their system as well. I gave the other cadets systems an Esuna and charcoal cocktail, and their systems seem to be rejecting the poison quite well. Quistis is another story. In her condition…she isn't fighting it, which is why she slipped into the coma. She's suffering from acidosis as a result of the mag-poisoning, which is in its final stages as well. I've given her a sodium bicarbonate treatment, but I'm not sure if the coma stems from the head wound, or the poison itself. The poison is foreign to me, so it's virtually impossible to calibrate a correct dosage…" she trailed off. The doctor looked up, eyes cutting sharply into his. "Have you been treated?"

He shook his head.

Still, the doctor persisted. "You should let me look at you."

He shook his head, and something behind his eyes chilled Kadowaki to the bone. Sadness there, yes; but something else, too, deeper down. "There's nothing you can do for me." His vest was spattered with blood, and his right arm had a nearly black bruise on it that had filtered out to encompass nearly his entire shoulder, the blue stains like a spider web that snaked from his bicep onward.

_Not a normal wound._

"Mr. Almasy-"

"Don't. Just-" He glanced up suddenly, eyes focusing sharply and he shoved her out of the way just as another streak barreled into him.

"**I'll fuckin' kill you!"**

Dr. Kadowaki fell with a strangled cry to the floor just in time to see Rajin's fist connect with Seifer's face, sending him sprawling. The ex-knight was on his feet in a second, but Rajin lunged at him again, grabbing him by the shirt and hauling him against the wall. There was blood on the larger young man's face and clothes, but his eyes belied the larger injury.

"Why'd you do it, man!" he screamed, tears streaming down the larger man's face. "Why the **fuck'd** ya do it!"

The room grew silent, watching the exchange between the two.

A blinding pain flushed through Seifer's cheek, but he didn't bother to fight against Rajin's grip as the bigger man slammed him back into the wall again with enough force to knock the breath out of him.

"She was my fucking **life**, ya know!" He sobbed. "And now it's over! Why didn't you let me die with her! _Why_!"

"Because it wasn't what she wanted!" Seifer shouted back, grabbing his friend's collar to look him in the eye. "She didn't want to die knowing that you were giving up next to her, you selfish fuck!"

"Giving up? _Giving up?_ Let me tell you about giving up!" screamed Rajin, crazy with grief. "You're the fucking **king** of giving up! You gave up on her, _just like you gave up on everything else_!"

Seifer narrowed his eyes. "If she asked me to stay, I would have died with her, the same as you. But she wanted us to leave."

He remembered Fujin's eye on him, and the last words on her lips: LIVE.

"_No!_ I don't believe it!" snarled the man in front of him. "We could have gotten her out! You didn't even try! She was scared, man! She wanted to live!"

Seifer glared back at his friend, anger boiling in his eyes, stemming from the pain  throbbing in his own chest. "She didn't want to live like that! **You** wanted her to, you son of a bitch! **You** were scared! **You** wanted her to live!"

Rajin's hands tightened around Seifer's throat. The ex-knight struggled to breathe, flattened to the wall by his friend's hands and chilled the utter look of contempt in his dark eyes. "You don't know anything! I used to think you were so brave, but you're a fucking coward, ya know! You've never loved anybody but yourself!" Black dots hinted in Seifer's vision, and he shut his eyes, unable to summon any indignation to fight off his friend.

_It's true, I am a fucking coward…But I loved her. I loved her too. She was like a sister to me. _

Suddenly, Rajin released him, and Seifer sank to the floor, gasping for breath.

He opened his eyes to see Rajin lying on the floor beside him, a syringe in his neck. Dr. Kadowaki stood above him, gasping for breath.

"Tranquillizer," coughed Dr. Kadowaki. "He'll be calmer when he wakes up."

"I doubt it," muttered Seifer, still rubbing his throat.

"Seifer-" began Dr. Kadowaki.

Seifer held up a hand. "No. He was right."

The doctor just shook her head. "I saw her. Fujin was already gone. You eased her last moments."

Seifer just shook his head and staggered to his feet, looking at Quistis' heart monitor once again. "Will she wake up?" he asked again, bracing his hand on her bed. The doctor felt a tremble in her breast at all the emotion laid bare in the young man's eyes just then, and ached to tell him anything but the next words that came out of her mouth.

"If she's lucky, no." replied the doctor. "That was a very stupid thing you did, drawing on her."

Seifer hung his head, and nearly jumped when he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. "That was also a very wonderful thing you did, Seifer. She would thank you, if she could."

The desperation in his face nearly broke her heart.

…

…

…

"How is she?"

"Not well. The blood transfusion went well. Kinneas's blood was used for the transfusion…although, they all wanted to donate. It will all be for nothing, I fear. My supplies are few here, and growing fewer."

"Help has been sent for. She will wake up, eventually?"

When would that damned question **end**?

Dr. Kadowaki shook her head, taking the unconscious girl's hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. "I hope not. She will be in considerable pain if she does."

Silence. Kadowaki took a shuddering breath. "Frankly, I'm astounded that she's still alive. The final stage of mag-poisoning ruptures virtually all major organs, and even if she hasn't, she's still in shock. Quistis blew her wrists and half her body open, the sudden loss of blood and the impact of that fire should have killed her almost instantly." The doctor sighed. "It won't be long now, even as stubborn as she is."

Edea bowed her head. "Have you told the others yet?"

The doctor shook her head. "They've been waiting by her bedside with such hope. It doesn't seem right to tell them…I can't, not now-"

The ex-sorAryas nodded. "I understand." Edea looked at the sleeping young woman again. "So young…all of them…" she whispered, her voice trembling.

The doctor nodded her head, wiping her hand across her eyes.

"They have never been children," said Edea softly. "But Quistis was perhaps the oldest in her nature."

Dr. Kadowaki looked up. "Will you tell the others now?"

Edea shook her head. "Perhaps it would be best to wait…to let things take their natural course."

"There is no natural course to this," spat the doctor, bitterly. "To any of this."

Edea put shaking hands to her lips. "I know. They all look to her…I don't know how to tell them…"

Seifer turned away from behind the curtain.

…

…

…

Squall stood in front of the window of the last standing classroom, hands folded behind his back and staring out at nothing. Thoughts swam behind his eyes, dark and deep and none of them particularly pleasant. Laguna and a few other Esthar military representatives would be here soon. It looked like SeeD would have first chance at the Galbadian Garden, since Trabia could not be reached and Esthar did not have much military force to spare. Besides, SeeD was the best infiltration force in the world…what was left of it, anyway.

Every cell in him was still stinging from his last trip to the Medbay.

_Rinoa's__ symptoms were worsening, and she was growing more and more agitated by the hour. Her ramblings, which had made little sense to begin with, were streaming off into older languages, sentences mixed with nonsense and words he could only guess at the meaning of. She had planted herself next to Quistis' cot, and was hanging onto the edge, singing a song with no rhyme and no rhythmn. _

_Kadowaki had looked him in the eye and given him an ultimatum. _

_"She's getting worse, Squall, and I don't know what's at the bottom of it. With her powers, with her abilities…she could not only hurt someone, she could bring the rest of this place down on a whim, with all of us in it."_

_"What do you suggest I do, Kadowaki?" he asked. "Send her away? Have you forgotten who she is?"_

_The doctor's face was grim. "No, Squall, and I have also not forgotten what she is." The doctor paused for a moment. "And as much as it pains me to say it, you don't have that luxury, either."_

_He'd turned away from her, his hands balled into fists._

_"Sedate her, Squall," said the Doctor. "Sedate her until this is all over with, and we can direct our full attention to her."_

_"Fine.__ I'll do it," he'd said, sick with the thought of it. Rinoa had looked up at him as he approached, and there was little recognition there, as if the woman he loved had retreated and left a mask in her place. She regarded him for a moment and then turned back to Quistis, humming to herself. _

_He touched her face, and guided the needle gently into her arm. She turned to look at him again, and this time, it was Rinoa's warm brown eyes on him, filled with recognition...and an awful understanding._

_She leaned forward and slumped against him, her form still for once, the madness gone to sleep with her. He had carried her to a spare cot, and had tried not to watch as Kadowaki strapped down her wrists and ankles._

_"Sleep, Rinoa," he'd said. "I'll be here when you wake up."_

The pain from his side was still lingering, the bandage pressing the hot, swelling pain close to the skin. It could have been much worse.

_Quistis…you fool_…

He remembered Dollet, two years ago, the way she had fearlessly manned the machine gun on the ship, yelling at him to get on board and below deck. The thing had come within a hair's breath of her, and she had stayed her ground till the last, firing straight into the thing till it was inches from her face. He had always thought she was a little crazy. Hell, they all were. They had to be…they learned to be.

And now…

_And now what?_

He felt the presence before he saw the reflection in the glass.

_Almasy._

His expression remained unchanged.

"I heard you put Rinoa to sleep."

Squall remained silent, but a muscle in his jaw twitched.

"There will be a mission sent out to G. Garden." It was not a question, but a statement.

"Yes." He replied.

"When?"

Squall looked up to meet the visitor's eyes in the glass, his expression unchanging. "Tonight."

"I'm coming." This also, was not a question.

"It's a SeeD mission. You're not authorized." He replied simply.

Green eyes narrowed. "And you also know I don't give a damn about being authorized or not. This goes beyond SeeD. I'll go, whether or not you _authorize_ me."

"How? Are you going to grow wings?"

He heard a distinct click- the sound of Hyperion's safety being disengaged. The silver sword flashed in the reflection. "I'll get on that ship one way or another, Leonhart, with or without your permission."

"You know that treason to Garden is punishable by firing squad." Replied Squall calmly, looking back outside.

"There's no Garden left. You know that."

Squall sneered. "There never was, for you."

"Then kill me right now. Because otherwise, I'm getting on the fucking ship."

"Don't be a fool." Squall turned fully to face him, eyes narrowed. "You dying isn't going to wake her up."

Seifer didn't reply, and Squall turned back to the window. Seifer obviously wasn't leaving. Hyne, he was as stubborn as Quistis.

_Quistis, sleeping_

_Rinoa, sleeping_

Someone had to pay for this.

Squall narrowed his eyes at the glass, and a long moment passed between them. "Consider yourself upgraded. If you die on this mission, Garden will deny-"

"All of my involvement." Replied Seifer, walking out the door. "Yeah, I know."

Squall turned back to the window, searching for Quistis in the ghosts that seemed to fill the empty, gray room, and hoping desperately not to find her.

…

…

…

"It's too soon for dental records…" said the cadet quietly. "We've been going by actual bodies or id tags. Even the tracking chips for the SeeD cadets are being used at this point, but it isn't reliable. Some of the injuries have rendered them inactive."

The group stood outside in a makeshift shelter of tarp and splintered wood to shield the wind, huddled in the small enclosure. Night was rapidly approaching, and with it, a calm and lingering cold.

"Casualties, then." Squall grimaced as he felt his side. "And I want SeeD casualties only. I need to assemble a viable mission team."

"Arquen, Jon. Astis, Cerra. Daerk, Fujin. Garek, Brek." The cadet turned the page. "Git, Sheris.  Jacakawski, Mak.  Kark, Lori. Korkis, Jeremy. Stolent, Craig. Trepe, Quistis-"

Squall glanced up sharply. "What the **hell** did you just say?"

"Stolent, Craig, Trepe, Quistis-" The young cadet never finished. Squall had gotten ahold of the young man's jacket, and had hauled him forward.

"_What_?"

"Sir, Dr. Kadowaki said…she's probably brain dead-" Squall's fist snapped out, catching the young man across the nose. The terrified cadet turned back to his commander, nose gushing blood onto the floor. Selphie burst into renewed, silent sobs.

Irvine, his eyes red, gently pried a shaking Squall from the now terrified cadet as Zell kicked the ground in frustration. Arya just bowed her head.

Selphie looked up from folded hands, tears spilling down her face. "Take her name off the list," she said, quietly. "Don't put it on until…just don't put it on."

The cadet nodded, taking a pen and quickly scratching the name off of the list while wiping at his nose.

Squall ran a hand through his hair, then proceeded to scrub furiously at his scar. "Start again."

They were barely holding together.

…

…

…

For the rest of the day, her bedside was never vacant. People came, went, and stood beside it, as if their diligence would wake her.

He visited her bedside, and held her hand for awhile. She had not awoken since Kadowaki had sedated her, but she dreamed in fits. He squeezed her hand.

"Caeruleus angelus. Excitate vow e somno," she whispered softly, jerking her head. Her voice was distant….eerie. When she spoke in the ancient tongue, the lost language of the sorAryas, he felt more distant from her than ever.

"Time to go, Rinoa," he'd said. "I'll see you soon."

It would have broken his heart to see her like this, if indeed his heart hadn't been already shattered somewhere on Esthar's battlefield. He was not sure what kept him going, but relied on whatever force it was to drag himself onto the plane.

Quistis' dog, miraculously alive, spent the entire day by her bedside and refused to leave it. Eventually, even the dog's vigilance turned into a deep slumber, and Garden had fallen relatively silent. Student bodies huddled together, and those with dormitories left returned to them to partake in fitful nightmares that barely passed for sleep. Most dozed on the floor in warm piles of bodies, instinctively seeking warmth and comfort from stranger and friend alike. Strangers made quick friends in crisis.

When the others had left, he stood at her bedside, watching with dark, shielded eyes as they watched the monitor light blink off and on, like a rhythmic heartbeat. Her wounds had been cleaned, and the glass and metal had been plucked from her skin by three different beginner medics and one doctor on loan from Esthar, the only one the ravaged city could spare. Three hundred and forty seven small pieces of glass and plastic and steel came out of her. If it hadn't been of the last second protect shield that an inexperienced cadet had erected around her before the retreat, the projectiles would have likely gone _through_ her.

She'd bitten her cheek when she'd fallen, and along with the stitches in her head, arms, and mouth, the number had grown into the hundreds. She looked like a puzzle, pieced together with thread. Hi-potion was being applied hourly, but the response was minimal at best.

The head injury was significant, but not the source problem. Kadowaki had said she was lucky. Had the young soldier turned her head at the wrong second, the metal that sliced her head open might well have severed it altogether. But the head injury was not the problem. It was the poison. It was the expenditure that last spell had cost her body. It was everything else. It was her Hyne-damned stubbornness.

_Damn you, Quistis. It should have been me._

The cannon's plasma bursts had been mag-coupled with poison counters the likes of which none of them had ever seen before. Initial screenings labeled it as a very potent biotoxin. A very crude chemical separation showed that it was similar to the biotoxin found in the bullet that Quistis had ordered analyzed. The toxin came from living matter, and was intended to be delivered to living tissue.

Although all of the soldiers on-scene had been exposed to the toxin, aside from those dead, it had hit Quistis the hardest. Kadowaki suspected that early treatment was the key to fighting it, and she looked to be right. Coupled with induced vomiting and Esuna-laced transfusions, the soldiers looked to be flushing it from their systems.

Quistis was not.

Quistis, who had always seemed so impervious, so unbreakable…she was leaving them. The Liberi Fatali had a hole in it, and they found themselves looking to that gap now for reassurance.

He leaned over the side of her bed. "Quistis." He said, quietly. "If you can hear me..."

He drew a shaky breath, looking down into the battered face that had once held care and affection. He hesitated. He had never been good with speeches, especially not those grounded in emotion. "I just wanted…to…tell you…thank you…"

He thought of little Quistis at the orphanage, remembered the stung look in her eyes every time he pushed her away…remembered grown-up Quistis, and the sad look in her eyes as she turned away from him that final time… They'd both known it was a lost battle. He had always pushed her away and she had always gone. This time, though, she'd pushed him away…and she had gone.

He thought of their fight, of the words they'd really spoken to one another and he felt sick.

_He had never told her…_

_Never accepted her affection…_

_Had taken her for granted and pushed her away at every opportunity…_

_And in the end…_

She'd given her life to save his…

 "Quistis…" He lowered his head. "I'm sorry." He straightened, a new, determined look overtaking his features. He shook his head. "I-"

_Her eyes looking into his, sad blue gaze saying goodbye…_

_"Wait up! I thought we could walk together!"_

_"…."_

_"…It's not like everyone can get by on their own, you know…."_

_"…whatever…."_

_"You can't stay bottled up……"_

_"Go talk to a wall…"_

This was too hard. He couldn't say goodbye to her, not this woman who had all her life looked after him like a sister, and maybe once, loved him as more. And maybe once, he had loved her too, had been capable of it, but everything had happened differently, and none of them had ever looked back. Until now…until he realized how much he had leaned on her, counted on her for sanity and stability.

"Don't hold on for us, Quistis. Let go. If it hurts, just…let go."

She was the quiet shadow behind Edea and Ellone, waiting to be needed…the subtle glue that had tried so hard to hold them together. Were she with them now, she would be walking from room to room, her quiet voice like steel, making plans and raising morale. Instead, they were all walking aimlessly around Garden, lost without her. It wasn't until her absence that they had realized how much they needed her.

He sighed.

All this life, words had been hard for him, and they were no easier to say now. And now it was too late to say them. He shook his head, and backing away, he raked his fingers through his hair, before turning to leave.

Emerald eyes were on him, watching him coolly in the flow of light that cut through the half-open skyline. Tarps were snapping and rattling in the wind.

"Saying goodbye, Squall?"

The form of Seifer Almasy stood in the doorway of the library, body illuminated in the moonlight. He wore his old gray trench coat, frayed and battered and hanging about his shoulders like tattered gray wraith. There was a darkness to his eyes, one that transcended the tired slouch of his form and lit the deep corners of his eyes. Grief and rage played along his expression. It was the face of a dangerous man.

Seifer looked closely at him, eyes narrowing. "Why say goodbye, Squall? You never gave a shit about her."

"That's isn't true."

"Oh, really?" he chuckled, lip curled with loathing.  "You loved her then, is that right?" It was a challenge as much as it was a statement.

Squall edged past Seifer, then stopped, turning back around. "Not the way you do. But yes...I did."

Seifer sneered. "Yeah, right. All your life you specialized in not giving a shit about everything and everyone around you. What gives you the right, now?"

He recognized this posture in Almasy- he had known it all their lives. Seifer was desperate, hurting, and looking for a fight. As children, Squall had more than not presented Seifer with his back on such occasions. But Squall's emotion was already worn raw, and he turned to face him. "And I suppose **you've** always specialized in caring about other people, right?"

Seifer's eyes narrowed, angry again. "She's dying because of you." He snarled. "She left to save your ass, and for what? You still don't care. You never did." He remembered Squall at the orphanage, ignoring everybody but Ellone, not caring, when Seifer had cared so much, too much, without wanting to-

Squall was silent.

"You sit there and you don't do or feel a fucking thing. Tell me why you get happily ever fucking after, and she dies. You tell me!" he snarled.

"We're all lost without her! Don't you get it?" shouted Squall. "Who gets happily ever after, Seifer? Which one of us? We all loved her! We all lost her!"

The blonde man whirled on him. "Don't talk about her like she's dead!" screamed Seifer.

"Seifer…" Squall shook his head. "She's dying."

_We're all dead. We're dying with her._

"No!" Squall knew from the look in Seifer's eyes that he'd lost it. "Take it back!"

Squall was still shaking his head, and Seifer dove at him in the next instant, his fist connecting with Squall's jaw hard enough to knock him over. Squall twisted beneath him, however, landing a bunch in the ex-knight's eye. It was like they were kids again. They both knew how to make each punch count, and in the next instant, Squall's fist caught him in the side of the head, hard enough to create stars behind his eyelids. The two men struggled to their feet, but while Squall was a better, more disciplined fighter, Seifer had the advantage of two years on the street and a few more years of simmering rage, and lowered his shoulder, driving Squall back into a medcart and spilling a tray of scalpels and other metal equipment into the floor with a loud crash.  Students looked over, but knew better than to get in the way.

"Gentlemen!" A light flickered on. "Gentlemen, stop it this instant!"

With a fury unbeknownst to most other middle-aged women, Dr. Kawowaki smacked them both with her cane-staff, yelling until the two men broke apart, both bleeding and bruised and gasping for breath.

"Squall! Seifer!" she chided, out of breath. "She wouldn't want this! And at her bedside! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" The doctor leaned heavily on her staff, looking down at Quistis. "I suggest you go and get some rest, both of you. It's been a hellish day for all of us." With that, the doctor walked back into the dark, the tap of her cane loud in the silence. The crowd disappeared, back to their bedside posts.

Squall spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor, wiping at his mouth with the back of his sleeve as he met Seifer's eyes. "You couldn't have stopped her," he managed.

Seifer's rage was fading. "Neither could you," he muttered, rubbing at his split lip.

Squall looked unconvinced. They both glanced at the woman in the bed behind them.

Seifer narrowed his eyes. "She deserved better than this." He spat, bitterly.

Squall sighed. "Yeah. She did."

_She deserved better than this life….this crappy life….she should have been a Queen, not a soldier…not a waste of a life whose circumstances put her between a tank and her duty._

Seifer turned back to the cot, regarding the angel sleeping in the moonlight. "Do you…do you think…" Vulnerability laid bare in the ex-knight eyes, a weakness Squall had never seen in him before. They had never acted human around each other, always keeping their feelings and susceptibilities to themselves. He knew the end of the question, however, because it was the same one he was wondering.

"I don't know." Replied Squall honestly, in answer to his former rival's unfinished question. "If anyone could, she could."

A pause fell between the two men, as they considered the woman on the cot.

_Friend._

_Teacher._

_Lover._

_Sister._

Squall narrowed his eyes. "We'll leave in an hour, Almasy."

With that, Squall exited, and Seifer was left alone with his thoughts.

He stared down at the sleeping angel on the cot in front of him, gently brushing her hair back from her forehead and staring down at her even as his eyelid dripped blood onto the sheets. All around the library, monitors beeped and sighs escaped, and other students crowded around the cots of their friends in the silence of the evening. It didn't seem right that she should die here, in the ruins of all she had sought to protect. It didn't seem right that she should die at all.

The moonlight strayed through the open window, soaking into her pale skin and lighting her like some fading beacon. He removed his gloves and traced her cheek. It was cold and still, like an ice sheet.

His chest was burning, but the rest of him felt numb.

He couldn't say goodbye. He wouldn't…not yet.

He saw Edea sitting by Cid's bedside near the window, his hand clasped in hers. She looked up suddenly, as if sensing him, and slowly rose to her feet, walking over to where he stood.

"Poor girl," she said, sadly, then dropped her eyes down to Quistis' sleeping form.

What could they say to one another, when everything had already been laid bare between them? What was there to say between two people that had already been at the height of heaven and the pit of hell, who had used one another for their own ends?

"Do you remember the time at the orphanage, when we found the dead baby sparrow in the yard?" she asked, quietly.

Seifer met her eyes. They could talk about her. She was the one pure thing between them.

Edea looked down to see Seifer's white-knuckle grip on the railings of the cot. He took a deep breath. "Yeah. Everyone was so upset," he replied.. "But Quistis…"

Edea smiled softly, remembering. "Yes. She used to watch that nest all the time, didn't she? She wanted to put pillows under the tree, do you remember?"

Seifer nodded. "Yeah. When that bird fell out, she cried the whole day. Made me and Kinneas dig a grave for it. We all thought she was crazy."

"It was her nature." Edea reached over and touched his shoulder, and he flinched as if she had burned him. He looked over at her, shrinking away from the comfort she was offering him with panic. Her touch was too raw. It would always be too raw.

"I've never told anyone this…" Matron just shook her head. "But Quistis' foster family was…not all Cid and I hoped it to be."

Seifer's brows knit together. Vaguely, he remembered watching from a window as a man and woman that smelled like musk and money, lead her away to a shiny car, and hating her…

Edea stared down at Quistis' still form. "When Quistis first came to Garden, she didn't speak for a week. She had injuries on her that no child should have."

Seifer's eyes narrowed, pain catching in his throat like a hot poker. Quistis, out in the snow…tears in her eyes…

"When they danced, it was the happiest time in my life…"

That was why.

Edea shook her head. "If Cid and I had known…but we blamed ourselves. They seemed like such good people, and it seemed as if she would have a better life," she said, trailing off. "I can't imagine what she must have seen during her years there, but somehow, the desire in her remained the same. Her nature to protect others didn't die because of those years. If anything, it flourished because of them."

Seifer looked away.

Edea sighed. "Seifer…you could not have stopped her. No one could have."

The ex-knight turned away. "I'm going to Galbadia Garden with the rest."

Edea nodded, sadly. "My children…" she said, sadly, gazing around her before turning back to Seifer. "I couldn't protect you." _Not even from myself, once_, she thought.

Seifer's eyes were filled with neither sympathy nor blame. "You raised us. It's a better life than most of us would have ever had without you. At least, for me it was." He replied, still staring down at the nearly lifeless girl beneath him. He looked at Edea again, and his face was no longer that of a confused, lost boy. His eyes held balance, and pain…desperation and sorrow, grief and strength…but he held them just the same, finally accepting the mantle that fate had placed upon his shoulders.

Seifer had finally become a man. A good man. Edea took Quistis' cold hand, and squeezed it.

If only the girl were awake to see it…

Seifer leaned over, brushing Quistis' blue, lifeless lips with his, and Edea's eyes overflowed with tears.

"Per aspera ad astra, omnes una magna nox." She whispered.

_Through the thorns, to the stars, the same night awaits us all…._

It was the tongue of the SorAryas, gleaned from an ancient language that all but her lineage had forgotten. And if the ancient tongue made him flinch, he understood.

_They could share this pain, this love for her. It was the one pure thing left between them._

**"**Amor vincit omnia**."** She said, smiling. "Remember that, Seifer. Never forget, as I did once."

His eyes met hers, determined. "If she wakes up…and I don't…come back…" He took a deep breath. He paused, a long silence engulfing his lips and his mind as he stared down at her. "Just tell her for me."

Overcome, Edea nodded, and embracing him, she watched as he exited the library without another look back, Hyperion slung over his shoulder.  She gave Quistis' unmoving hand a gentle squeeze as she watched him go.

…

…

…

It was nighttime by the time the SeeD team was ready to depart. Supplies had to be exhumed from the piles, and a mission team had to be set. There was no shortage of those willing to go, but there was a very short list of those that could be spared. As for Selphie, Irvine, Zell and Xu, they simply refused to stay. In short, Squall had selected a team that he could turn his back on, and one he knew would not have stayed behind anyway.

By the time Seifer arrived, a small crowd had gathered around the Ragnarok. Squall, Selphie and Xu were studying a diagram. Laguna, Kiros, Ward, and some other Estharian soldiers were gathered around a map with Serabin and Xyrxis Talen, a rank A SeeD that Seifer remembered from his own class, years ago. If he remembered correctly, Xyrxis' field specialty was explosives.

It should prove to be an interesting mission, then, by all accounts.

The group members already present looked up just in time to see Arya, Xyrxis, and Nida, each holding a large box of wires and blinking boxes.  All three SeeDs wore slim, black flightsuits and were equipped with infrared goggles, which were perched on their foreheads. Zell and Arya were apparently having an argument over something. He walked beside her, his voice low and his expression angry.

Zell shook his head. Arya raised her chin and replied as Seifer approached hearing range. "Balamb was my home, too. Besides, I know Galbadia's engine systems better than anyone."

Zell crossed his arms stubbornly. "I don't care. You aren't going."

"It isn't _your_ decision." With that, she continued up Ragnarok's platform.

Zell looked to Squall, who shrugged. "She's easily our best tech, and she volunteered first."

Zell shook his head, and stalked up angrily behind Arya.  Seifer could relate. He wouldn't want his girlfriend on this mission, either. It was like flying blind into a black hole, with no consideration for what lay on the other side.

Finally, the group had gathered in a small circle in that stood beneath the small tarp, huddled together as much for warmth as lack of room.

Squall spoke up. "SeeD will go in first. We will infiltrate G. Garden using the waste disposal system discussed by our tech team. Groups of three will pair off and scan the duct systems for any activities, and then enter the main hallways. All Galbadian soldiers should be considered enemies and detained or eliminated, depending on their level of hostility. When we find Martine, we will radio the message and meet back at the ducts.  We want him alive, if at all possible. Then the tech team will come on and land Galbadia in an open and appropriate area." Squall looked around. "If we fail, or if radio contact fails to reach B.Base in 12 hours, Esthar's team will assume hostile victory and shoot G. Garden down. Any questions? Do any of you wish to cancel your participation in this mission?"

The group was silent.

"Ready?"

Nods.

Xu's gaze snapped onto Seifer as he approached the hangar. "Oh, no! _He's_ not coming!" she shouted, her fierce eyes raw from crying. "Over my dead body!" she snarled, getting to her feet and lunging towards him. Selphie held her back, but barely.

He walked past her without a word, sheathing Hyperion at his side and walking up the Ragnarok's platform. He heard discussion below, and finally, the rest of them walked in, Xu storming to the front after giving him a scathing glare. Evidently Xu had lost.

The ship's engines rumbled to life almost immediately, and the Ragnarok's crew buckled into their seats and sat silently, each lost in thought. Garden's ruins faded away as the ship soared up, dipping up above the clouds and settling into a steady cruise. 

"Cruising altitude reached," announced Selphie.

Squall nodded and unbuckled his seatbelt, walking to the center of the ship and glancing around him. "Get ready," he said, simply, before walking to the front of the ship and discussing something with Arya and the other techs.

Arya's eyes flickered up from her laptop. "Galbadia's waste systems are identical to Balamb's. They're automated, flushing once every six hours. The barrel hatches are four feet wide, and the unloading time is approximately six minutes with the cleaning process accounting for 2 minutes and the waste disposal itself for about three minutes."

"So basically, we've got one minute between the shit and the soap," muttered Irvine.

Arya shrugged. "Theoretically, there shouldn't be any waste. There's not many soldiers up there, if any, judging by our field counts of the dead at Esthar. Still, the system is fully automated, so we can count on it opening regardless."

"We don't _know_ what's up there," replied Zell. "Anything's possible."

Squall stood up and walked towards the back of the ship. "I want three different mission teams. Xu, Serabin, you're together. Selphie, you're coming with me.  Kinneas, Dinct, and Almasy, you're together."

"Almasy in my group…this is Dollet all over again…" muttered Zell.

Seifer set Hyperion across his lap, and stared blackly out the window. The ship had fallen to a hushed, expectant silence, one rife with tension. The thought of what was to come no doubt weighed heavily on each person's mind, as well as what each had left behind.

The moonlight lit the clouds in strange patterns. Images of her danced across the silver surface, teasing him like ghosts of dreams that would never pass…and ones that had gone forever.

_Quistis, sitting on the shores with her knobby little legs bent, carefully crafting the sand-_

_Quistis, back straight and proud at the front of her classroom, pointer tapping in her hand as she taught them how to live and die in codes and order, her eyes a pair of icicles-_

_Quistis, standing between him and Squall, arms spread apart as she yelled at them both to stop-_

_Quistis, covered in Marlboro slime, bursting into laughter-_

_Quistis, looking up at him, eyes searching his as they caught their breath-_

_Quistis, bloody, broken, dying in her codes and order, the same ones he'd mocked, long ago-_

_He was going to leave her-_

_But he was going to leave her _**living**_-_

Seifer clenched his jaw. Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't he have died alone in the hotel room, wasted and worn? She would have lived, and he never would have had to relive losing everything. He thought of Fujin, and felt as if he could almost cry now, could almost taste the tang of salt on his lips and the shiver in his belly, rising like a burning wave of acid in his throat…

He hated Fujin for asking it of him, but he understood. She'd loved him, but she'd chosen Rajin. Rajin was a rock, stronger, more steady than Seifer ever would have been, and all things considered, Seifer never thought of her as more than a sister. She was always just Fujin…the glue of the posse, the sane voice the kept Rajin out of trouble and kept Seifer from pounding Rajin's face in.

Fujin, whose life had been forever haunted by the men of her youth, her speech and her sight broken up by the terrible things done to her young body, but strong still, and stubborn…

She was gone now. Her pain, her happiness, all of it was gone. She would never feel any of it again. She could never laugh, would never cry, and she would never be anything but a soldier. And in the end, she had looked up at him with her good eye, and given it all to him. Her pain, her passion, and…her _love_.

_Why, Fujin?_

He understood. He would have asked the same of her, and she would have given the same as he. It was the nature of people like themselves. It was the nature of the wounded. Sweet Fujin…fierce like a tigress and gentle like rain…gone, shattered beneath the stones. He fingered at the silver chain around his neck, and fought back a wave of desperation.

_Everyone I love dies…_

He narrowed his eyes, staring out at the stars as they blinked past.  He could not think of these things now.

Serabin was sitting next to him, a pair of what looked to be heavily upgraded hand guns hanging from a long, leather strap that slung across his waist. He glanced at the young man out of the corner of his eye, and earned a cool, measured look in return.  The young man's face was expressionless, his long white hair tied back in a pony tail that draped casually over one shoulder. After awhile, Serabin broke the stare, crossed his arms and closed his eyes, deep in a silent half-sleep that Quistis so often had retreated to.

Men like Serabin were meant to be soldiers…not men like him. Men like him were supposed to die on rotting recliners, bleeding out in a sea of beer bottles and wasted dreams…And yet, here he was, on a ship with people he'd once despised, trying to be a hero again.

Dawn was rising like a bloodstain in the east, and in front of the crimson skies, Galbadia Garden hovered, immersed in the bloody sky, smoke running in pallid, fluid clouds from its sides.

_Will she wake up?_

_I don't think so, Seifer-_

"Quistis." He murmured, the whisper lost in the embers of dawn that glowed to life in his eyes. This was the end.

He tightened his grip around Hyperion's handle. 

_Let it come._


	32. Deus Ex Machina

Author's Note: Well, it's finally here. I really enjoyed writing this chapter. I recommend some hard classical or anything with an angry beat while reading. Rob Dougan works nicely, especially 'Furious Angels', 'Yesterday', or pretty much anything off the Furious Angels soundtrack. This was actually one of my favorite chapters to write, and I hope you all will enjoy it as well.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything, except for my original characters. I certainly don't own Shakespeare's wonderful line, "A hit! A very palpable hit!" from Shakespeare's Hamlet, and I don't own the great idea for id chips, which I got from xara. I hope she won't mind me using her wonderful idea.

Thanks so much for reading!

_Hyperion_

"…He enter'd, but he enter'd full of wrath;

His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,

And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,

That scar'd away the meek ethereal Hours

And made their dove-wings tremble. On he flared

From stately nave to nave, from vault to vault,

Through bowers of fragrant and enwreathed light,

And diamond-paved lustrous long arcades,

Until he reach'd the great main cupola;

There standing fierce beneath, he stampt his foot,

And from the basements deep to the high towers

Jarr'd his own golden region;

….Hyperion arose, and on the stars

Lifted his curved lids, and kept them wide

Until it ceas'd; and still he kept them wide:

And still they were the same bright, patient stars.

Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,

Like to a diver in the pearly seas,

Forward he stoop'd over the airy shore,

And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.

-J. Keats, Hyperion (excerpts)

Twilight was a distant stain on the Estharian horizon as Dr. Kadowaki stepped gingerly off the large gate of the military truck, bracing herself heavily on the staff. Little could be heard above the roar of the truck engine, but one of the Esthar doctors was trying to shout something at her. She shook her head at him, then waited as he waved his hand at an Esthar guardsman to kill the motor. Once the engine had stopped, he turned back to her.

"Are you all right, doctor?"

"Fine, fine," muttered Kadowaki, adjusting her med bag. "The morphine's not due to quit for another hour yet." She didn't mention that she'd calibrated the dosage for herself based on a giant funguar. At any rate, the pain in her leg was gone for the moment. Her splint, made out of two broken wood pieces and strapped with a few severed belt buckles, wasn't very effective in holding the limb steady, but it would have to do for now. She wanted to make these observations quickly and head back to Balamb, and she told her Estharian escort as much before limping across the field.

The field was littered with the crumpled forms of soldiers spread out across the dirt. Some wore the dark uniforms of Balamb and others the metallic blue of the Esthar soldier- she tried not to look at those. Instead, she focused on the blue uniforms with silver armor- those of the Galbadian soldiers.

The breeze stirred the scent of death- heavy and sickeningly sweet. Kadowaki was certain that as long as she lived, she could never accommodate herself to that smell.

She glanced over at Dr. Kolare, Esthar's chief of medicine, who was looking pale. "We're going to need more body bags."

The doctor wiped his sleeve under his nose. "Yes. They have been sent for already. When will Balamb be here with more supplies? Our hospital was hit in one of the blasts. We can take no more soldiers, as a large majority of our own staff has recently become patients." The doctor held out a can of salve, dipping his fingers into the jelly and wiping it under his nose.

"Balamb health officials should be here in a few hours. Last they radioed they were well on their way, Dr. Kolare."

Another doctor was at her side, handing her a face guard and fingering a scalpel. She recognized him as Dr. Arsen, a young doctor under Kolare's tutelage. "Don't make any cuts on the bodies," she told him. "We're going to take two or three back to the lab for dissection and we don't want possible ground contamination."

Arsen looked at her coolly. "As we're on Estharian ground, Kadowaki, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your orders to those beneath your command."

Kadowaki burned to set the young man straight, but now was neither the time nor the place. This was a biohazard site, not a morgue slab, and Kadowaki had the experience with field medicine to know the difference between a bullet and a mag kill. This certainly was magic at its most destructive.

Kolare turned on him. "And as _my_ resident, you'll follow my directives and remember your manners. I want no cuts on the body. Now shut up, put away your toys, and start hauling the corpses onto the trucks."

Kolare gave Kadowaki a sympathetic glance as he handed her a jar of the jelly. "Ignore Arsen. He's had his head up his own ass since birth."

Kadowaki nodded, accepting the salve and dotting it beneath her own nostrils. Her nasal passages instantly filled with a sharp, heavy scent that kept death at bay. She accepted the mask from another, younger doctor, and strung it over her head.

Doing her best to keep her leg straight, she collapsed down next to one huddled Galbadian body, pulling a small tape recorder from her lab pocket. "Dr. Kadowaki, Balamb id number 01759-0-65324MD, reporting on the Esthar battlefield as part of a biohazard team sanctioned by Esthar and Balamb authority. Report as follows. Corpse one, Galbadian soldier, male, age roughly 18-20 years, cause of death non-apparent at first observation. The subject has been dead for approximately 4 hours and is lying prostrate." She paused the tape recorder, and with a grunt, turned the corpse over before starting the tape again.

She was unprepared for what greeted her. The skin was grey, stiff. The eyes were fixed and nearly black from the hemorrhaged blood that had flowed from the brain to the front of the skull. The tint, however, was green, an indicator of residual mag-poisoning and the resulting presence of a strong biotoxin. And the stench….the odor of rotting flesh….it was nearly unbearable. The battlefield hadn't killed this one.

"Advanced rigor mortis and lesions in the first and third…." Her voice trailed off as she sank to the ground. This wasn't possible.

The soldier had been dead for weeks.

She remembered what Quistis had said about the D.S. Research Center's findings- the reanimation of dead tissue and the retention of basic sensory impulses. But this….she hadn't been prepared for this. She was motioning Dr. Kolare over, but he was hunched over the side, vomiting his lunch into a biohazard bag. Several Estharian guardsmen were also looking queasy.

Dr. Kadowaki gazed across the field, where at least a thousand Galbadian soldiers lay dead. The bodies would have to be burned to ensure the biotoxins did not contaminate the groundwater. When she looked at the Esthar battlefield, she was once again reminded of the time when Adel's dark shadow had been cast across the city. But this destruction…Esthar in years past could not compare to this. Kadowaki directed her gaze to the horizon, thinking of those aboard the Ragnarok.

_And what, then of the horrors awaited the soldiers sent to Galbadia?_

…

…

…

"Galbadia approaching, cloak activated 1 hour and counting. Fuel tank 1- 43, Fuel 2- 90."

Selphie turned from the controls to look back at Squall. The large, floating structure of Galbadia Garden now hovered a few miles from them, smoke billowing from the missile wound in its side. "From first glance, Squall, Galbadia looks to have activated its emergency systems. It's not going to be docking any time soon. We'd better follow Arya's plan."

Squall nodded. "Activate the rear thrusters and stabilize the craft. After we dock, circle G.Garden at an appropriate distance and take off the cloak to save fuel. Once we're on, they're going to find out eventually. We just need a few minutes to get in position."

Squall turned towards Arya. "Are you ready?"

Arya sat cross-legged on the Ragnarok floor, her glasses already pulled over her eyes and a stream of numbers reflected over the metallic lenses. Typing furiously with one hand, she threw a grouping of cables at Nida, who caught them. "I'm going to emulate an aerial re-fueling sequence used by the maintenance crew. The fuel wiring is interconnected with Galbadia's waste systems. I'll hack it from there."

Nida nodded, walking up to the platform and securing a cable around his waist.

Selphie glanced up from Ragnarok's control panel. "Hold on, hatch opening activated. Internal pressure stabilizers activated. Buckle up, kids!"

Seifer fastened his seatbelt just in time before the hatch opened up, spilling cold, sucking air into the cabin space. Nida jumped out, arching his back like a sky diver, swinging slightly before touching something on his gloves. Magnets…powerful ones. Instantly, Nida attached hard to Galbadia's side, with enough force to knock the breath out of him. He quickly recovered, however, and soon set about connecting a group of cables to a large circular opening- one of Galbadia's fuel ports.

"Cabin pressure dropping." Announced Selphie. "Stabilizer's shaky…"

"Hurry up, Nida!" shouted Squall, over the loud hiss of the air.

But Nida was already climbing up the cable, giving the thumbs-up sign to Arya, who nodded and once again began furiously typing. Nida crawled inside the cabin, and the door closed around the wires after Nida made sure they wouldn't be snapped off in the doorframe.

"Cabin pressure steady," said Selphie, unbuckling her seatbelt to climb around and watch Arya's computer screen. "You can all move around now."

Seifer craned his head to see her computer screen, but the flurry of numbers made little to no sense to him.

"Level One access granted," she announced. "Breaking into Level Two, feeding code one…gotcha! I have to access the main system to jam the hatch. I'll feed it a few viral cookies to keep it occupied for awhile." A pause. Arya bit her lip. "Voila! Mainframe access granted."

She took a small disk from her side pocket and fed it into her computer, adjusting her glasses. "That was a little too easy," she muttered.

"Now what?" asked Squall.

"Now, we wait," replied Arya. "The waste ducts should open in an hour, and I'm going to jam them as long as I can." She adjusted her earpiece and turned back to her screen. "You guys should rest up. I'll wake you up when the hatch is activated."

They settled back. The wait seemed like an eternity, and Seifer had to fight off the madness of boredom more than once. His leg giggled as he sat, bouncing the sword on his lap. There was too much to think about here in the silence, between what had just happened and what was still waiting for them aboard the damaged Garden.

Most of the rest of the group had gone back into an uneasy soldier-sleep. Zell sat shoulder to shoulder with Arya, his hand resting softly on her arm as she watched the screen, alert as a spider on its web. Irvine and Selphie were learning up against one another, Selphie resting her head against Irvine's shoulder as the two dozed. Serabin and Xyrxis were discussing something up near the control panel, Serabin with a dark look on his face. Xyrxis looked concerned, and Serabin kept rubbing his temples and tossing his head, as if trying to shake himself awake. Xu had her arms folded across her chest, eyes closed and foot tapping impatiently and Nida was somewhere in the back of the Ragnarok, checking the explosives. No one said their goodbyes.

In a soldier's world, goodbyes are always implied.

He met Squall's eyes across the Ragnarok. They were distant, but Seifer could read the trepidation there. They were most likely going to their deaths, and they knew it. And what could he say to a man who had been both a brother and an enemy to him? He felt like he should say something…anything. In another world, they might have been brothers.

Squall beat him to it. "For our friends," he said quietly.

He narrowed his eyes, his own resolve thickening. "Yeah. For our friends." It was the one thing they could have agreed on.

With that, Squall closed his eyes, and after a few minutes, Seifer did the same. Thinking about what lay ahead would do him no good- he would live through it or he would die, and no amount of planning was going to make much difference.

Even when he dozed, his thoughts made little sense. He thought of Quistis, sleeping with her hair loose, the softness of her skin and her warrior's heart. He thought of his mother in the garden, her pretty smile and her soft hands, filled with potting soil. He thought of Fujin, yelling at him to take Rajin and go.

_Quistis, saying goodbye…_

_His mother, saying goodbye…_

_Fujin__, telling him to live…_

Arya's voice startled him back into reality. "All right, guys, hatch opening, five minutes and counting. I'm feeding it the fueling seq….and….wait. This isn't a normal-"

Arya shrieked as the screen in front of her lit up like a giant floodlight, clutching her ears as a shrieking ring sounded through the earpiece. The keyboard in front of her spit out a spray of sparks and she was thrown back, hitting the cabin wall with a dull thud.

"Arya!" Zell was at her side in an instant, removing her goggles and ear piece. Blood was seeping from her ears, and her expression was terrified. "Not a normal mainframe….it…it's a virus…..it….the hatch!" she shouted. "Hurry and get on!"

Zell shook his head. "Arya, you're-"

She shoved at him, grimacing as she clutched her head with her other hand. "Go! I'll be fine!" She scrambled to her feet, back to the remains of her laptop and quickly rearranging the sparking wires, once again resuming her typing. "Hurry up! I'll try to hold it! Get ON!"

The group scrambled. Squall took hold of one of the cables and buckled several gliding hatches.

"You sure those'll hold, Lionhart?" asked Irvine, quickly grabbing one and standing ready.

Squall shrugged. "We'll see."

_Great_.

Xyrxis was at the control panel. "Take your places." Arya and Nida quickly buckled in. "Hatch opening…."

Seifer watched the hatch open, saw the open waste duct, and took a deep breath.

_Here we go._

…

…

…

The rest of Balamb Garden appeared to be asleep, but Kadowaki, kept conscious by a mixture of morphine and various uppers from the salvaged supplies, sat in front of one particular cot, watching the heart monitor with an untiring vigilance. The young woman could have been her daughter in another time and place, one in which she had not sacrificed a family for her career, although the girl certainly bore her no resemblance but in stubbornness and spirit.

"I'm so sorry, Quistis," she murmured. In her hand she held a long, grey cord, one that wound between a machine and a generator.

The very breath the woman drew was a violation of her own wishes. The very life that Irvine and Selphie had forced into her on the field was one she had signed documents against. Quistis was a woman of strong determinations and fragile hopes. Her own hopes for her life had been meager, but her determination for others had been unparalleled. Here now, she was proof of that.

This pained existence on the cot was one they had made her bear because none of them could stand the through of a world without her quiet strength. And try as she might, Dr. Kadowaki found herself no different- she could not make herself pull the cord.

Quistis, who asked for nothing, and gave everything, now lay in pain because those who loved her could not give her the simple peace of death.

Quistis did not stir from the cot, but drew listless, hoarse breaths when the machines permitted her. Dr. Kadowaki looked down at the grey cord in her hand, and burst into sobs. She pressed her cheek into the young woman's cold hand and prayed for the strength to kill her.

She waited hours. It did not come.

"I'm so sorry, Quistis. I'm so sorry."

…

…

…

"How about eeny-meenie-miney-mo?"

"I can't believe you lost the map."

"We could flip a coin…."

"I can, however, believe we lost Almasy. That idiot always has to go runnin' off by himself…playin' misguided hero…dunno why I thought this time'd be any different."

"How about paper, scissors, rock?"

Irvine turned to Zell, a thoroughly exasperated expression on his face. "Like, I don't care how lost we are, Zell. I'm not playin' paper, scissors, rocks to navigate our way through hostile territory."

The Galbadian drainage system operated like a series of rat tunnels whose height barely allowed Irvine to stand, and whose shape and design seemed to make no sense whatsoever. Fortunately, they'd been designed in horizontal fashion to allow the cleaning crews easy access, but that was where the intelligent part of the design ended.

They'd lost Almasy hours ago, and the constant dripping and squeaking of the pipes was unnerving.

"How about-"

"Hyne_damnit_, Zell, I swear by all that's holy, if we don't get outta here in an hour I'm gonna strangle you-"

Zell held up his hands, scowling. "Don't yell at _me_, man. I'm just trying to find us out of here through strategic-"

"Guesswork?" Irvine shook his head and rolled up the cuffs of his pants. "Your mama must've dropped you on your head good when you were a kid-"

"What, like you gotta a better idea?"

Before Irvine could respond, a loud, drawn out groan shook the tunnel directly above their heads.

Irvine swallowed. "Paper, scissors, rock it is."

"Fine. I win, we go left next bend."

The two kept walking, shaking their fists as they went.

"I win! Paper beats rock. Left!"

"No way, man! How the hell does a piece 'a paper beat a rock?"

"It _covers_ it, duh."

"This is the dumbest game I ever played."

"Just because it exceeds your comprehensive abilities-"

"Exceeds my comprehension my ass, the hell does paper have on-"

The loud grown sounded again, but this time, it seemed to come behind them, accompanied by a rushing sound.

"Hey, does that sound like water to you?"

"Oh, _shit_-"

…

…

…

If Seifer never saw a sewage pipe again, it would be too soon. Between the faint stench of don't-think-about-it and the loud grown of Hyne-knew-what, he was stuck in a place he didn't want to know about and didn't know how to navigate. He was almost sorry he'd ditched Irvine and Zell hours ago.

Almost. Any more of Zell's theory-navigation and he would have shot himself in the foot…or Zell.

He turned a bend, only to have a heavy feeling descend upon him. Something like premonition prickled along his spine, and he stopped in his tracks.

"The sewers…I thought I'd find you here."

A click behind him, the unmistakable sound of a gun's safety disengaging.

_That voice_. Seifer's shoulders knit together, a shiver clenching his spine. Impossible.

"You're dead." He blurted.

"Not quite. That bullet should have made you a puppet, Almasy. Now you'll just have to die a lowly SeeD."

Seifer whirled, Hyperion extended and his finger on the trigger. He followed the path of the blade as it snaked out to touch air and met-

Brek Garek, dressed in a Galbadian uniform, pointing a gun at his head.

"Surprise, surprise." Brek chortled. "They let you come! I'm looking at a dead man."

Seifer found himself looking down a steel barrel even as Brek looked down his.

_Draw_.

And suddenly, it made sense. Brek requesting to be on the Tromedian mission team…Brek attacking Quistis as she tried to heal him in the truck…Brek following him so closely…

…stupid, greedy, spoiled Brek….

Brek had been in on it all along.

Brek's skin was pale and sickly, the veins crawling beneath the pallid flesh like tiny, creeping vines. His eyes flickered, swam, the sickness thick like mud in the irises. His eyes were thick with the disease already…bright with sickness. Seifer recognized that look, recognized it as surely as he'd known his own face, once.

Brek was…

But how? Impossible.

"Fuck." Fear coiled in his stomach, sickening and shameful. **Impossible**. And yet, he felt it in his blood, could feel a familiar sensation prickle along his skin. His arm was killing him.

_No…not so impossible._

"Aren't **you** supposed to be dead, Garek?"

The gunman shrugged, holding up his free wrist, which was missing a large chunk of flesh where the SeeD administration put the tracking chips to aid in finding MIA soldiers. "I imagine they found a microchip somewhere. As you can see, they didn't find a body."

"Pity."

"The pity is how long it's taken you to get here!" Brek was sneering. "The bullet in the IGCS tower would have made you into a puppet, **my** puppet, you know…if that bitch Trepe hadn't gotten in the way." He smiled. "But you're here now. So, welcome!"

And then Seifer understood. The angle of the bullet….why had he never thought of it?

The IGCS soldiers hadn't shot him. Brek had.

"On the subject of Trepe, I thought you might like to know that it gave me quite the rush to order her death at Esthar. She didn't _have_ to die, I suppose, but I thought she should. And she made it _awfully_ easy, didn't she? Just stood in front of the tank! So much for all that SeeD training!"

Seifer's eyes darkened. "Don't talk about her to me," he snarled, body tensing.

Brek cocked his head. "Touchy, touchy." Brek licked his lips. "A little fact about Trepe for you. I took the liberty of researching her pedigree, when she caught my eye. Her blood was as dirty as a rain gutter, did you know? Her mother? A whore they found dead in a dumpster. Not fit to lick my boots in civil society, but gave me orders anyway. Where's the justice? Where's the hierarchy? But I suppose you wouldn't understand about that, having been weaned at a trough yourself."

"**Fuck** you, Garek." A few years ago, he might have lost his temper and rushed Garek. But not now. There was too much at stake.

"I'm curious, though. I wasn't able to stick around in Esthar. Tell me, were her pieces as pretty as her whole? Did she cry, or was she brave about it? Did she shit herself? I've heard bodies do that, after the heart stops. I'd like to know. I think it would be fitting for someone as high and mighty as that SeeD bitch to die with a pantsful of shit, don't you?"

Seifer readjusted his aim, new strength filling his sword arm. His finger wavered on the trigger.

"So touchy!" Brek grinned as he saw the young man's eyes heat with hatred, raising his sword. "Ah, ah! Careful now. Wouldn't want to splatter that pretty little brain of yours all over the floor now, would we? At least, not yet."

"You _fucking_ traitor." snarled Seifer.

_Well, if that wasn't the pot calling the kettle out for treason._

"Traitor?" Brek's laughter echoed behind him. "**You're** calling **me** a traitor! A traitor to what, _SeeD_? That bunch of squirming maggots no more worthy of life than _dogs_? If memory serves, not long ago you tried to kill them, too, tried to climb to the top of the world and piss off of it, and as **I** recall, they handed you your ass-"

"You shut the **fuck** up!"

Brek's face was twisted up in rage. "And Cid, that **father** they worshipped? Groomed those dogs for their deaths just as surely as he took them 'under his wing'. Such an irony! Such a joke! He had the audacity to call that place a school, when all he did was rent out children for death certificates. Those fools slaughtered their childhoods and knelt down and died just like dogs in the gutter, so that Cid could make some fucking money. All that, and that buffoon had the audacity to lecture us on honor! Contracts, orphans…where the fuck was **his** honor?"

Seifer sneered. "You wouldn't know honor if-"

"And neither would you! You, a disgrace in SeeD and a disgrace against it! Don't talk to **me** about honor- you've turned tail so many times you must not know your ass from your conviction by now."

Hyperion's weight was beginning to weigh on his arm. The sword was heavy, and certainly not intended for draws such as these.

Silence. Brek took a step closer.

"So, Almasy, what next? Where's all those balls and bluster now, I wonder? Hasn't that big brain of yours figured it all out yet?"

Seifer glared at him, not knowing where to begin. Killing him would be a start, but then he would never know what lay behind the proverbial 'door number three'. Or just how the fuck 'door number three' had gotten there in the first place…or where in the hell the door was in the first place. He was fairly sure that Garek wasn't the grand finale. If Brek Garek had managed to coordinate such a large and organized act of terrorism, well, he'd grossly underestimated Brek Garek. And he knew he hadn't.

Brek rolled his eyes. "The quiet type? Very unlike you. This is getting boring." He snapped his fingers. "I was told to bring you in alive, but then, I can't be responsible for what _Glyphias_ does, can I?"

"_Glyphias_?"

_But_….

Serabin's form loomed in the doorway suddenly, now carrying a Galbadian-issued gunblade strapped to his back. But something was amiss.

Serabin's gaze….

It was blank, unblinking, staring straight into his without a flicker of recognition. The normally bright green iris of Glyphias' eyes were blunted to something dull and brutish, his mouth set in a thin, shapeless line.

"Almasy, I'd like you to meet my little toy. I believe you've both met." Brek chuckled at Seifer's expression. "No, Almasy, Glyphias isn't a traitor. You'd think with all the money his daddy's shoveling into Galbadia Garden's military project, the boy would have a hand in the cookie jar. Imagine my surprise when Glyphias not only shunned my proposal to sabotage SeeD's attempt to do some Galbadian auditing, but threatened to turn me into the authorities. I was misinformed- it seems there are still some heroes among you sordid lot. But it isn't anything a little tweaking couldn't fix. A chip imbued with…well, I believe you're familiar with the biotoxin, aren't you? It's running through _you_ as we speak."

**His arm.**

**Shit**. If Brek was bluffing….

…but if he **wasn't**…. Seifer stared down at his arm as if it had suddenly turned against him.

"For some unknown and frankly irritating reason, though, you seem to be rather immune to it." Brek examined a nail. "Eh. No matter. Serabin here certainly isn't, are you, boy?"

Brek snapped his fingers again, and Glyphias blinked. "I could shoot you, of course….but I'd rather see you sliced to ribbons. I like to watch. Serabin, are you paying attention?"

The young soldier only blinked once again.

"Good boy." Brek snapped his fingers. "Kill him."

Serabin tilted his head, and in a flash, drew the Galbadian gunblade, pointing it out in a graceful, challenging arc. An honor battle. He should have expected it from Glyphias, even under mind control. Seifer briefly entertained the thought of shooting Glyphias between the eyes, but it didn't seem right. Serabin was a soldier, though and through, and by all accounts, wasn't himself.

_You picked a find time to grow a fucking conscience, Almasy._

Seifer sighed, and raised his gunblade, blade pointed straight out. An acceptance. It was no matter. He and Squall had been the only trained gunblade specialists in the SeeD Academy when he'd been at Garden, anyway. Glyphias' skill couldn't possibly equal his.

His arm tremored just slightly when the swords touched together.

_Knock him out. Don't kill him._

He whirled as soon as the swords touched, swinging hard at Serabin's shoulder with an extended arc, the flat of the blade leading. But Serabin's blade was just as quick, and the blades clamored with the force as Serabin threw the swing. Seifer turned again, boots scraping on the cement as he once again cut around for a shot at the base of the skull, leaving his side open, but Glyphias anticipated his move, and the tip of the Galbadian gunblade knicked his side- a sharp pain followed by warmth.

"A hit. A very palpable hit." Chortled Brek gleefully. Seifer swore.

Damn. Glyphias was _good_.

Serabin swung the blade in a cross arc that Seifer recognized as one of his own trademark moves, then rushed him from the right. The blades clashed, and Seifer jumped back to avoid being disemboweled.

"Did I forget to mention that Glyphias is a weapons expert? He's studied the gunblade at his leisure for three years now, and, you know, I do believed he used your hawk-style blade play for a reference mark? Interesting, isn't it?"

_Interesting.__ Fuck you, Garek. _

Seifer grimaced at the twinge in his side as he lunged right, slicing at Serabin's side only to meet Hyperion's metal with Glyphias' blade once again. This was going nowhere.

_Let's see….where would a mind control chip be?_

_Base of the neck, probably, as near the brain as possible with minimal surgical work.__ Hell, for all he knew, it could be in Serabin's left toe. Cutting was not an option._

"Serabin, I'm getting bored. Finish him up, would you?" Brek waved his hand dismissively.

Serabin's eyes narrowed, and he charged Seifer once again. This time, however, Seifer was ready for him, and met him head on. The blades tremored and pressed together as both soldiers pressed hard, boots slipping on the floor as each fought hard to thrust off their opponent to gain an entry slice. Seifer quickly brought his hand up and pressed it against Serabin's face. Serabin, who hadn't expected such a maneuver, quickly recovered and pressed his advantage with both his arms, driving his own elbow into Seifer's already nicked side.

Seifer grunted. Not much time before Serabin regained his balance and put another slice in him.

"Thunder!" he hissed, and felt a shower of sparks erupt from his palm to Serabin's skull, the sizzle of electricity as it sunk crackling fangs into Glyphias' nerve endings. He brought his hand back immediately, letting Serabin take only the initial shock of the hit.

_That ought to jar something loose. If not, it'll sure as hell turn off a few lights for awhile._

Serabin, in turn, let out a strangled shout that abruptly cut off, falling in a heap at Seifer's feet, Thunder burns streaked across his face.

Seifer backed up, hissing as he felt his side. Just a trickle. Nothing about 20 band-aids wouldn't fix.

Seifer quickly whirled, pointing his gunblade point at a very surprised Brek, who managed to get his weapon up just in time.

"What are you going to do, Almasy? Shoot me? The reformed Almasy doesn't shoot people, does he?" Brek sneered. "No, the reformed Almasy limped back to Garden and let them neuter his pride. Quite frankly, you don't have the balls anymore, do you?"

Seifer's hateful gaze did not waver. "What is all this, Garek? It sure as hell isn't _your_ doing. You couldn't fight your way out of a wet bag."

The man in front of him smiled, his weapon never wavering. "I thought you'd be wondering eventually. I can just hear the cogs in that primitive little mind of yours **turning**. Project GenEden…does it ring a bell?"

"No."

"Didn't think it would. Anyway, it was very costly, and Martine had to enlist a few…investors, shall we say, whose interests would be well served in the furthering of such an project. My father has always been interested in the progression of Galbadia's military, especially since Balamb turned traitor and started shacking up old Sorceresses and their sorry excuses for knights. He appreciated the supreme irony of Project GenEden, I suppose, the idea of using a military thorn as a military tool. I appreciated the irony as well, you might say, with a little convincing. That, and the well-known fact that Cid Kramer was a limp dick incapable of pressing Balamb's military advantage, well, it's got quite a few people upset."

"So hundreds of people are dead for your aspirations."

"And how many died for yours, Almasy?"

_Touché_.

Seifer remained silent.

Brek chuckled. "I thought so. You should know that a revolutionary is often misunderstood in his time. Lambs have to be sacrificed to build an empire. You know that, too." Brek shrugged. He shifted his weight a little, and Seifer's eyes instantly registered the movement. Brek was unpredictable.

It was the only thing he could count on.

"To say the least, I've become quite…acquainted with the benefits of GenEden. The symbiotic potential of such a weapon is beyond measure."

_Symbiosis_? The kid was off his fucking rocker. "Weapons aren't symbiotic. They're parasites that need a trigger finger."

"Someone's gotta push the buttons. Better me than you."

"So you killed all those people, and that's symbiosis."

Brek shrugged. "Only the ones that wouldn't follow. And some were harder to get to follow, but believe me, Almasy, I've had some help. I can't take all the credit." He tilted his head to the side, the look in his eyes as chilling as his smile. "Money can only buy so much power, you know. The rest you have to take."

"You know what's next, don't you?" asked Seifer, never moving his sword arm. The blade's point was steady, lined up between Brek's haunted eyes.

"Oh, I've an idea." Brek laughed. "Today is just the beginning."

_Just the beginning…_

Gooseflesh rose across Seifer's back. He'd heard those exact words before…

_From his own lips._

"This thing…whatever it is, it's a drug." He said. "It's a drug, and it'll spit you back out a shadow."

"No, Almasy. That's **your** story, your life," snarled Brek." He sniffed disdainfully. "You were always weak. Your blood was always made of shit. I'll succeed where you've failed"

"And you're a fool. Just like I was." Seifer saw her in his mind's eye, her smiling face, her yellow eyes flickering with fever, promising him heaven and throwing him headfirst into hell... "Don't do this, Garek."

Brek's mouth twisted into a smile. "Goodbye, Almasy."

Both fingers tightened on the trigger.

**Click.**

The shattering noise of gunfire lit up the small tunnel in a loud roar- a single shot from each gun.

Brek gave a shout as his own gun exploded from his hand in a shower of blood and tissue. Seifer twisted his body as he fired and winced as the muscle in his arm jumped- the bite of a bullet- but barreled forward just as quickly, drawing up Hyperion in a offensive, cutting arc as he advanced.

Brek barely knew what hit him.

Brek opened his mouth to take a deep, winded breath as Seifer collided with him, but his breath hitched. He stared up at the ex-knight, eyes narrowed, before glancing down to see Hyperion's point buried nearly to the hilt in his chest. Blood bubbled up in his throat, hot, sticky, and he was choking on it, drowning. He sputtered, unable to speak, blood spurting between his lips instead of words.

Seifer smiled as Brek sagged on Hyperion's point. "You must be thinking what an inefficient cut I've made. You're right. Leading at a slight angle, through the chest cavity and through the back. I've shaved a couple ribs, yeah, but with any luck, I've missed the heart and major organs. In fact, judging by the pain you're in, I'd say I have. In all likelihood, though, your liver or your stomach's flayed….and that'll take some time and pain to run its course. You could bleed for hours-"

Brek shook his head.

"-or a little twist, and it's all over."

Seifer tilted his head to the side, smiling, looking down at him with an absolute calm that belied the hate in his eyes. Brek glared up at the ex-knight, saw Seifer's own blood running down his shoulder and onto his sword. The ex-knight had taken the hit deliberately to shoot the gun out of his hand, altering his shot and taking the bullet himself just to enjoy the opportunity to run him through with the sword. Brek swallowed and knew then why the Sorceress Ultimecia had selected him. He thought like she did.

He struggled for breath. Almasy's dirty blood seeping into his…**no**…

"A bullet was too easy for you. Pigs like you should be skewered properly."

Brek moaned, eyes rolling like marbles in his sockets as he tried to focus. No, not the mongrel's blood in his…._fuck_….**fuck**…

Seifer smiled. "Are you thinking that I'm crazy? It's true, but completely beside the point. Now, listen closely, because I want you to do something for me."

"Gullllgggghhhh…"

"I want you to beg. Beg me to end your life quickly, or I'll let you bleed out like a fucking pig." He snarled. "It can take hours. Especially when some piece of gutter trash with a sword makes such an inefficient cut."

Brek felt Seifer change his grip on the sword, and shook his head furiously, his eyes rolling up towards the ceiling as he attempted to struggle weakly against him. "Beg."

Brek's eyes swirled, and he nodded. "Ghhhhhht-" Blood squirted between his teeth, brimming on his lips.

Seifer smiled, leaning closer. "I want you to think of Quistis, Garek. Think of her now. She's an angel. You aren't fit to lick her fucking feet. Think of her, and die." Seifer jerked his wrist, and withdrew quickly, watching Brek slump to the ground, his blood now pouring out of him in black, gurgling gushes. The young man twisted, fighting for breath but instead choking on his own fluids.

Seifer stared at Brek sprawled out on the floor, squirming like an insect. Seifer leaned over and calmly wiped the blade of his sword on Brek's Galbadian uniform.

"You know, you're right. We are the same, Garek." he muttered, "I've just got better aim."

Brek's head jerked violently to the side as his writhing began to fade, his eyes gazing listlessly out at nothing.

Seifer returned the empty stare, grimacing in pain he clutched his shoulder. He turned.

Suddenly, another shot echoed through the chamber. Seifer glanced up sharply at the sound. It was Serabin, his cold green eyes fixed on him as he lowered his gun. This time, however, his eyes were clear. Cold, but clear.

_Fuck…did he shoot _**me**_?_

A sudden clatter sounded behind him, and Seifer looked behind him to see Garek with a rather large hole in the front of his skull. Brek apparently had managed to scrape his gun into his hand, intending to shoot him in the back. Not surprising. He should have expected it.

Seifer looked back at Glyphias, who was still holding one of his pistols up and gripping his neck, where blood was trickling through his fingers. He'd ripped out the chip, apparently.

_Huh. I was right. It was in the neck. Oh well, something to remember for next time._

"Are you crazy?" asked Serabin, taking his hand from his neck to look at the blood before holding his hand back up again.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I asked you if you were crazy. Like him." Glyphias gestured with the point of his gun barrel at the lifeless body on the floor. His body was still twitching, the after-effects of being hit with a Thunder spell, even a diluted one. Residual energy was still jumping through him like a hiccup, and every so often, his hand jumped. It would have been funny under any other circumstances.

"So, are you crazy?" Glyphias' finger tightened on the trigger.

Seifer shrugged, holding his shoulder. "No crazier than you are."

Serabin narrowed his eyes as he turned his gaze fully on Seifer, studying him. "Now that's an awfully ironic thing to say." He replied, slowly lowering his gun. "I'm going to find the others. Here." Reaching into his pocket, he tossed a small vial at Seifer, who caught it. It was a Hi-Potion, the contents swirling in the small flask.

Seifer said nothing, but instead changed his footing, trying to ease the sting in his side.

Serabin twitched again, aiming a disgusted look at Garek's lifeless corpse. "Fool." And with that, Glyphias was gone.

_Well, well well, if shit just didn't keep getting weirder and weirder…_

Seifer looked down to his arm, feeling the pain for the first time. The bullet had just grazed his shoulder- a tiny slice across the bicep. He'd had worse. Uncorking the vial on the Hi-Potion, he downed it in a single gulp, feeling the effects wash over him in a spark of icy adrenaline. Hi-potion was best applied topically to specific injuries, but Seifer was too cut up to distinguish which cuts needed the most attention. He clenched his teeth, shivering as the liquid coursed through him. His shoulder closed, and the gap on his side slowed to a trickle. It would do for now, although, when the effects wore off, his side would probably be open again.

Seifer stooped to pick up Hyperion, his face expressionless as he stepped over Brek's body and into the shadows of the ajoining room, opposite to the one that Serabin had exited to.

It was the Galbadian storeroom, a large, empty room filled with crates, shelves, and a generally empty feeling. He walked cautiously into the darkened room. Silence. Seifer squinted, and could make out the shape of boxes, tiles-

Light invaded his vision, blinding him, and he staggered back, just as the burst of brightness crashed into the wall behind him, blowing a chunk cleanly away.

"Fuck!" He ducked quickly behind one of the large shelving stands just as the dust from the wall spattered against his cheek.

"Ah yes, Mister Almazee, correct?"

…

…

…

Night now, and the soft sighs of the monitors and the sleeping. Constant communication lines buzzed and crackled, and through the doorway, she could see Laguna and his men hunched over a radio.

"Base to air, come in. Status report." Kiros leaned forward, speaking into the comlink.

"Kkhhhhhhhhtttt. No report yet from the teams. Three hours and counting. We'll contact you when we get something. Over and out."

Laguna and the others sat back in their seats, their expressions fixed, stony. Silence once more descended among the group.

Leaning in, she softly closed the curtain that separated the rooms and turned to the sickbay.

Edea came up behind the sleeping form of Dr. Kadowaki in the dark, observing the grey cord held tightly in her fist, her other hand tangled in her short and graying hair as she dozed. The doctor had been up half the night with the battle, no doubt.

She had most recently won her own.

Gently, she pried the cord from the doctor's grip, looking down at it for a moment. She had spent the night sitting in the shadows, letting the feel of old dreams enshroud her. Some were happy. Most were dark. And when she had emerged, she had felt cold enough to do what the others could not.

She could let her children go.

She could let this one go.

"Caeruleus angelus. Per aspera ad astra, omnes una magna nox…" She leaned over, and pressed her lips to the young woman's cool forehead, much as she had done when the girl beneath her was a sleeping child. She slept like one now. For an instant, she saw Quistis again, chasing the waves, laughing the child's laugh that had lived on her lips too briefly. The image was gone quickly, however, and what remained was too scarred and pained to be Quistis any longer. She had to believe it. Edea reached out, and tucked a strand of hair behind the girl's ear. She smoothed her hospital gown, and pressed a kiss against her cold cheek.

"Go and see them now, pretty one," she whispered, tears dropping from her eyes. "Go and show the angels your pretty blue wings."

She pulled the cord.

…

…

…

The voice came from somewhere in the cold, spacious room, but he couldn't place it.

"Eet is a blast compressor, eef you are wondering. New invention of mine, eh? Will blow your head right off. Interesting, no? Although, Mister Almazee, I do not think you will find it interesting for long."

"_Odine_?" He turned in the darkness of the long lines of the stocking lockers, the metallic sheen of the shelves a milky metallic in the dim, distant hall lights.

"Give zee man a prize, eh? Dumbsheet."

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he shouted.

"Eef you haf to ask, you may never know, eh?"

Another blast of light, this one nearly removing his ear.

Seifer backed into a carton of crates. "You switch alliances awfully quickly, even for a crazy old fuck with a god complex." He aimed up at the only light in the room, a dim, flickering bulb that was more of a moth shrine than a light source. One shot, and the light shattered. Total darkness- a more level playing field, he hoped. "What did Galbadia Garden offer you?"

"I am not working for Galbadia Garden."

_Could have fooled _**me**_, thought Seifer, seeing as you're _**on_ it._**

"Zose military pigs do not understand the first thing about creation. Only destruction. Zat is all you dogs care about. Great inventions, great monuments and minds, destroyed by guns and tanks and zee primitive military minds of zer times."

"Then who the hell **are** you working for?"

"I vurk for creation. I am on the side of creating things, not destroying zem. I vill not let you pigs destroy my beautiful work. You cannot possibly understand-"

"Understand what?" Seifer edged around what he guessed was a group of crates. _That's it, Odine. Keep talking_. If he could just pinpoint the sound in the darkness.

A flash of pre-fire ignition was his only warning to get the hell out of the way. Another light flared up in the darkness, this time striking the shelf directly to his left. Seifer jerked his arm away just as the large metal shelves toppled over, nearly crushing him in the process.

How the fuck could he see him?

"In case you are wondering, Mister. Almazee, this blast compressor also has a very handy infrared scope."

"Yeah, well, for someone who can see in the dark, Odine, you've got shitty aim."

"Hm. You shan't tink so for long. Now let's keep the talking to a minimum, eh? I am not ignorant of your strategy."

Shit. The old man was smarter battle-wise than he gave him credit for. Tactic number two…

"Fira…" he muttered, balling the spell in his hand as it diffused across his palm. He heard the sound of the compressor being fired, and turned to the sound, lunging hard to the left as he let his spell fly towards the sound before his own eyes were blinded by Odine's blast.

He rubbed at his eyes, trying hard to clear the spots away as he rolled to his feet.

"Sheet!" screeched Odine, and he heard a click and a clatter. The weapon had overheated.

Seifer curled his hand. "Fire!" A light sprung from his palm, floating gently in mid-air. Simple first level spell, but quite handy if one needed to sustain fire and light for any length of time.

And there was Odine, scrambling in the dark for his gun on his hands and knees and dressed in his ridiculous outfit that made him look like an absolute insult to pompous poofs everywhere.

Odine froze as he heard Seifer's chamber switch over, looking up at the long point of the gun. Seifer swiftly kicked the old scientist onto his back, placing a boot lightly over his throat as he pressed the pointy end of Hyperion into the center of his forehead. He pressed in, just enough to break the skin a little. A small dot of blood appeared on the scientist's forehead.

"I want some answers, Odine, or I'll fillet you like a salmon steak."

"I vould rather eat my own tongue, you worthless shit, zen tell you-"

Seifer smiled. "Then I'm gonna do exactly as I said.. A cut here," Hyperion's point moved to slice at his jacket, just missing the skin, "Another here," The blade crossed over his chest once more, this time nicking a bit. "And your heart will pop out like a fucking jack in the box. You'll even have a few seconds to watch it unwind."

Odine's face was covered in sweat. "Never!" he shouted. "All you pigs understand is killing! You can never understand my beautiful creation! I vill not let you touch her!"

The idiot was yelling loud enough to give away his position to anyone who might be still alive and hostile on the floating piece of hell. Seifer raised his sword, and with the butt of it, knocked Odine unconscious. Killing him would do little good, as without his inventions he was harmless anyway and without Odine Seifer might never find out what the hell really went on up here.

"Why must you old bastards always be so difficult?" he muttered, tossing the blast compressor across the room. Grabbing Odine's elaborate collar, he proceeded to drag the old man across the room. Holding up the scientist's limp hand, Seifer pressed the palm into the door lock and watched with satisfaction as it slid open, leaving Odine in the middle of the doorway for a convenient, overstuffed doorstop.

He realized then that he was in the top portion of Galbadia's top-like structure. The lights of the large, dome-like room flickered on one by one, florescent bulbs humming as they blinked to life.

A pale blue glint caught his eye, then, and he turned, Hyperion drawn to face what no amount of warning could have prepared himself for.

"I thought you'd come." A dark voice, rumbled deep within the shadows of the spacious room.

_I'm getting a little tired of being expected._

He turned to say as much, but found his blood had turned to ice.

…

…

…

"Serabin, report."

No response.

"Serabin, report."

Silence. Squall shot a dark look at his communicator before trying again.

"Xu, are you there?"

"….yeah, I'm here. Duct 2, approaching the mainframe top floor. Everything's clear so far. I've lost Serabin. Where are you?"

"Duct 5, heading up the same way. Cross over and we'll meet at Duct 3."

"What about everyone else?"

"Don't know," Squall responded, looking behind him. "I can't get ahold of them."

Neither chose to comment further on the implications of that statement.

"I'll meet you there." Responded Xu shortly, and the link was cut.

Squall adjusted the com setting, and put it to his lips once more. "Leonhart reporting to ship. How much time do we have?"

"One hour and fifteen minutes!" shouted Arya. "What's your status?"

"I'll let you know in an hour and fifteen minutes," muttered Squall, terminating the connection and stuffing the communicator back into his pocket.

…

…

…

The body was that of a woman, bare from the waist up, breasts and shoulders engulfed in wires, the clear blue of a reGen tank lit up behind her like a cerulean shroud. The slope of her waist tapered down into a tangle of pure wire: blues, reds, greens, all lit with a blinking thread of light. Otherwise, she looked as she used to, face pale, body twisted and crippled with magic, her red lips curved around pointed teeth.

On the metallic platform below there was a strip of metal sporting a code number and the etched name: GenEDEN. So, this was GenEden.

"Fuck."

He stared up at her, the glimmer of the tank reflected in his eyes.

He felt her heartbeat in her skin, the remains of his once loyal service to the fallen queen. It was like familiar acid on his flesh.

His eyes rose to meet hers, glittering with malice. "Adel."

She chuckled, a low, metallic hiss in his ears. "You remember. How flattering."

She offered out a slim arm, tangled in wires, her pale face and red hair flowing like a silken, bloody liquor in the water. Hundreds of other wires snaked behind her, coiling like snakes. She looked like a metallic medusa.

What the hell had Odine and Martine created?

"Visne saltare, Seifer?" she whispered, her deep, velvet voice broken apart by the hiss of machinery behind it. Hers was an ancient language, a language wound through his veins in the knowledge of her, of her past. She was a virus, one that infected him, became part of him…haunted him from the shadows. It couldn't be….impossible…but it was.

Adel was alive.

It was too terrible to comprehend, and yet, power nearly radiated off of her in waves, pouring from her dark eyes, lurking in the confidence of her smile. She was stronger than she had ever been…and she was also about a hundred times more mad. And with Adel, that was saying something. Edea had fought Ultimecia, struggled against the power raging inside her to save a husband and a family.

Adel had always embraced it.

"Noli me tangere." He spat, mind twisted in hers as he felt the almost metallic connection rise up between them, pulling him in like a dark, rolling wave. Darkness hinted at his eyes, and his arm was throbbing now, the pain like knives in his shoulder. She spread her arms, her very presence enveloping him like an old lover, and he scrambled for freedom, struggled to keep his mind closed and to retreat from her. Every attempt to escape ripped him, tore at his mind as if she had physical barbs in his skull.

She had him. _She'd had him all this time._

To his horror, he felt his aching arm extend, the limb taking on a life of its own as it rose, slowly, palm facing out in front of her. She smiled, and just as suddenly, it dropped to the side, lifeless, once again within the realm of his own will. He looked down at his hand.

And he realized. The poison in his arm…it was **her** poison…her taint in his skin….

"You're dead." He spat, as if the words would make it true, as if she would unravel like silk at the words and fade into ashes at his feet.

"Vide et credere." She gestured, spreading out one graceful arm to indicate her new form. "Do you not see? Do you not believe? A posse ed esse."

"Don't talk to me in that tongue." He snarled, dashing his head as if trying to shake it out.

Adel smiled. "Your language, then. My host has taken excellent care of me, as you can see." She smiled, and he followed her gaze to one of the blue ReGen tanks, bubbles cascading up between the bulk of a body- the tall, languid form of a man. Seifer drifted closer, squinting as he stared into the bright, turquoise liquid. "I was to be his military whore. His weapon of flesh." Her smile never wavered. "I had other plans, of course, which did not factor into his."

Bubbles floated up through the slightly bloated figure, shifting the swollen flesh in an effervescent cascade. Fabric hung in shreds around the pale limbs, which draped without movement, wires fastened like leeches to the neck and brain. A sheet of thin blonde hair obscured the face, hanging like a curtain of crepe paper over the eyes and mouth.

Adel smiled, and the figure jerked, but the movement was on impulse, an electric current winding through already dead tissue and stimulating a reaction. The hair waved back, and Seifer found himself looking straight into the pallid blue irises of Martine. The flesh of his mouth was peeled back, lighting his face in a surreal, rotting grin.

Martine had apparently been dead for quite some time.

Seifer jumped, and stumbled back under the unwavering gaze of the deceased Headmaster.

Adel simply laughed. "Ecce," she mused, hatred lining her silken words.

_Behold._

"Martine and Odine…such brilliant men…bright souls against the dull luster of the common human. They thought to create a weapon more powerful than any ever created before. One that would make them powerful men. One that would serve them and their desires. An nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia mundus regatur? "

_Don't you know then, my son, how little wisdom rules the world?_

"You've got all the puppets you could want. So why do you need _me_?" he spat, turning from the horrible site of a man defeated by his own greed.

It was a sickening sight. Greedy men devoured by their own grasping hands. Martine sucked clean by his own creation. Odine's brilliant mind made into a crude tool…Brek's reckless greed, harnessed into something destructive…

"Legs…eyes…ears…this human 'machina' only affords me so much mobility. For now, I need legs. I need ears, and eyes." The burning points of light in the center of Adel's crimson iris seemed to draw him in like iron cables fastened to his brain, and he was held, transfixed by her words. "As you can see, my other…_butterflies_…have not yet hatched. The power was too much for them…but you, you will do…for now."

Her eyes narrowed. "Do you know what it is like to die the death of a sorceress, little one? The hellish prison to which Laguna and then his bastard son condemned me? No sight, no sound, no senses…a fate worse than death. The cold and endless darkness….and yet, I cannot die, not truly, not until the line ends. Not until the curse is sealed." She snarled. "I shall not be going back to that darkness again."

Seifer glanced up, and before him, the other reGen tanks lit to life, shadows bubbling beneath the silver-blue surface. Smaller forms…wires through which the same strange spark and crimson oil bubbled forth. Small hands spread out like pale starfish in the water, eyes staring out, unblinking, at nothing. Seifer felt his veins go cold.

The missing children…dead.

"As you can see, Knight, I've been planting some _SeeDs_ of my own…unfortunately, these did not take." She smiled. "I've found, through your memories, that orphans latch onto new things with ease. They do not resist change as easily as those that are loved. They cling to nothing, and are eager to adapt to substance. Even dark matter. Like your own little shadow, ne?"

Seifer turned back to her. "They're just children." he spat, shaking with rage.

"So were you! Liberi fatali." She replied, haughty as she narrowed her eyes at him. "Such children should be honored to share in such glory. My successors shall be the chosen ones."

_No, they'll be your puppets._ He shook his head. "They didn't choose. Not like I did. You chose this for them." He met her gaze. "Let them go."

"What, you for them?" Adel, or whatever part of the machine was still Adel, simply shook her head. "Haven't we become noble, young Almasy…I seem to recall a time when you ran to do my bidding-"

"Times change." He spat.

"Ah…but not people." She tilted her head, hear eyes searching for something, and brightening when they seemed to catch it. "Ah yes…the skeleton boy... Would he like to come out and play, I wonder?"

He backed up, but froze, suddenly, as his mind turned to ice. Her eyes glimmered, and he could only stand and watch as smiling, she reached out-

_But not physically._

She slipped into his mind with the ease of an old lover, his traitorous brain like warm bath water rising up to greet her. This was the plane on which sorceress's claimed their knights- in thought and psychic fire.

And the skeleton boy would let her in.

_He stood, Hyperion clutched tightly in his hand, the metal diminished and chipped over years of erosion and failure. His grey coat hung in tatters on him, fluttering in an invisible wind._

_She walked to him, dressed in red velvet, the gown hugging her breasts and train snaking like a lapping tongue behind her. She was pale, and her eyes held a ruby fire, a greedy flame that was as corporeal as it was human. It was what she looked like before the magic deformed her body, twisted it into the wretched form that Laguna had banished. In all reality, the Adel he had served was no more a woman than she was a man…in her former reign, she had played with both equally, absorbing the strength and the beauty of countless hapless hosts, male and female alike. However, Adel had been born a woman, and that was the form in which she always approached him, as if she knew the reality of her physical form disgusted him._

_She smiled, and his stomach coiled around his spine, shrinking away from the thing before him. Edea had fought the power, and thus, there had always been corners of her mind that were sanctified, where he retreated and gasped for breath to keep from going mad. Adel's mind was suffocating…every door and every window just a pore for the power. Adel had welcomed the curse, and with it, the disease of that power. There was no refuge in that dark mind._

_"You've killed my new toys," she purred. "Wouldn't it be only chivalrous to be their replacement?"_

_Don't let her drag you into your head_, he told himself, bracing his mind against the onslaught of her rage and her charm. If he ended up there, it was as good as over. Adel's mind was like a catacomb…each dark corner only leading to a thousand more. Her mind was simply all the lives before her- the dreams of all faded sorceresses. Any one of those dreams was like a million maggots writhing in his blood, rooting hungrily for his soul.

He'd go insane. He'd shoot his own brains out before he'd let her in them again.

And yet, her touch was numbing, soothing, like the soft burn of brandy under his nose. She was a drug.

_The woman in front of him cocked her head, studying him as if he were an insect on the fringe of her web. "It doesn't have to be this way, Seifer," she soothed, walking towards him "In fact, it can be any way you like it."_

_His mother appeared then, dark golden hair dusting her shoulders. She wore a red sweater and shorts, bending over in the garden. "Hey, sweetie! You want to come in the garden with me? There's a butterfly on this tulip…"_

_He took a step back, shaking his head. It was a trick. He glared at the figure. "My mother is dead." _

_The woman that wore his mother's skin stood, shaking her head slowly from side to side. The air around her seemed to bend, and suddenly it was Ultimecia wearing Edea's body, a dark robe hung open around her breasts and the glorious ebony train of her hair dragging on the floor behind her. "What a clever little boy you've become. A worthy knight." Her yellow eyes bore into his, and she reached out a finger, crooking it delicately under his chin, down his chest. "A worthy son. Ride for me again." He shuddered, breaking free of her touch and taking another step back._

_"Stop it!"_

_The creature just shook her head again, and all at once, Matron stood in front of him, long hair in a plaited braid behind her and a simple blue housedress that reached her ankles. "I can be whatever you wish me to be, Seifer. Mother, lover-" And it was Matron's voice in his ears, Matron's hands on him in the dark-_

_"Stop it!"_

**_FLAsh_**_._

_Her hands on him in the dark, sweet and beautiful and **wrong**-_

_He shuddered, feeling as if he were going to vomit. "No!" he shouted, and stepped back again, pressing his hands to his temples as he tried to blot out the terrible images of his memories with the woman who had been a mother to him…the girl who had loved him…the witch that had nearly crushed an entire world…._

Adel was laughing.

_He opened his eyes, only to see Rinoa smiling at him, her innocent smile, hands behind her back and daisies stuck in her hair, the way they had been that summer. Her slim, tanned legs were encased in short denim cut offs- a lacy white tank top ended just short of her belly button. She held out her hand, eyes dancing mischievously. "Dance with me?"_

"Hmmm…Or perhaps you'd like something a little darker?"

**FlasH****.**

_Rinoa, dressed the way Adel had been, the dress molding itself to her skin like a silk lover and she turned, eyes lit with the bullion colored madness of Ultimecia, with power and with lust- _

_"Dance with me?"_

_He shook his head, trying desperately to clear his vision, to focus-_

_Flash._

He shrank back from her, trying hard to concentrate, to keep his thoughts from hers_. _

_Fuck, don't think of her, don't think of her now, she'll _**know…**_and she'll turn it on you…_

"What are you trying to hide from me, boy? Where are your little secrets sleeping?"

_He tried hard to resist, but she knew the corridors of his mind…knew which dark corners held his treasures and his fears-_

"No, don't-"

_Too late._

_Quistis, standing in the snow, hair loose and flowing about her shoulders. She stood, holding out her hand, the sunlight reflecting in the blue depths in her eyes and making it hard to breathe. And she was all right, there was no blood on her wrists, on her head, and her eyes were open, sparkling. She was okay. She was smiling._

_"Dance with me."_

_He started to reach out, then horrified, drew back his hand. He narrowed his eyes._

"Not real…none of this is real…get out of my head, damnit! **Get out!!"**

_He backed up again, and a tremor washed through him, rippling at his back._

_Darkness._

_He opened his eyes, and saw her smile before his mind once again reeled into darkness. Her lips were curled back over her teeth, her pale, wire-infested face pulled back in a grim, skull-like human representation of rage and pure power that sparked along the walls._

And shit…_shit_…he was in her mind now. He'd run from his own…directly into hers_._

**Her** playground now. Her whims. Her darkness.

He was in the dark, and she was laughing again. "Still you run. Always running. Are you lost, little boy? Shall I find you?"

It was as good as over. There was nowhere to run to, now. She would do such horrible things to his memories…twist them and break them like flesh and bones, drive the points of him back into his heart a thousand times over until he prayed for death.

Furiously, he tried to will himself awake, to wake up and force Hyperion through his chest. Any death would be better than a life trapped in her mind.

But she wouldn't let him go. She had him now, and she was **never** going to let him go-

_He looked down, and once again found Hyperion in his grasp, the blade new, as unmarred as the first day he held it in his hand. His trench coat was new- the cloth fairly shimmered, and his boots were shined to an almost blinding gleam. Beneath the boots, however, the darkness wavered, and a shadow rose up from the nothingness, a shadow that mirrored him in every aspect of his face. Hyperion winked back at him, and the image was perfect._

_Except the shadow bore no face._

It never had, even in his childhood. Shadows did not have faces. The Skeleton boy was only a dark mirror of his desire, reflected at him in disturbing angles.

_The shadow moved, and it was as if a million maggots were squirming in him, screaming in his ears. The shadow wavered, and suddenly, Hyperion's blade was dripping with blood-_

_His father, wrist sloped over the bloody arm of the recliner, the shine of bottles and blood and brains a dull gleam in the moonlight as he writhed, broken and bleeding on the filthy floor-_

_Squall, his skull opened and bleeding, rage finally lighting in his eyes as he brought his gaze back up form the ground-_

_A Galbadian soldier on his knees, begging for his life and the life of his comrade beside him, tears shining in his eyes and his lip trembling against chattering teeth-dead, dead, dead, and he was laughing-_

_Blood….so much blood…and he couldn't stop laughing…._

He opened his eyes to stare at her face. Her real face, strung with wires and lights.

"The Skeleton Boy…you remember him, don't you, Seifer?"

"Nescio quid dicas." He spat.

_I don't know what you're talking about._

"No? As I recall, Seifer, you enjoyed killing those people, just as you _enjoyed_ watching them die. You _enjoyed_ watching your father die. You enjoyed killing those soldiers, and as I recall, you certainly enjoyed slashing your foster-brother's pretty face open. It was **your** pleasure…**your** dreams..."

_"Adel, stop."_

_Another chuckle.__ The darkness seemed to be pressing on him, an infinite pressure that held twice the dark weight that Adel had ever suffocated him with._

**_"Who is Adel? I am the dream-chaser. I am the eternal shadow, cast along the light of the living. The Mother Dark. I am your god. Open to me, and I will show you things you have only dared dream…"_**

_He whirled, narrowing his eyes at the shadow, whose faceless visage appeared to be laughing at him. A hot hatred rose in him, hatred for this thing, this crippled thing inside of him that he had allowed to grow too big-_

_Uttering a cry, he ran forward, stabbing the point of Hyperion through the shadow's dark chest-_

_And stumbling, as the sword turned to dust in his hand._

_A hand closed around his throat, lifting him up with ease. He struggled to breathe, struggled to rationalize-_

It's all in your head! Fight it, damnit!

**_But which is the dream, child? The life you lead, or the life that chases you in your sleep?_**

_The shadow had ahold of him, and he was trapped, smothered in the memories of what he had done, the past like a crippling paralysis that rendered him immobile-_

_Look at him_.

No.

_Go on, Seifer. Look at yourself. See your face. Your real face._

**Fuck** you!

_But his head was being forced down, eyes open-._

_He blinked, looking down into the Skeleton Boy's face-_

_And saw a million writhing maggots within the dark pool of the shadow's visage, swimming in a sea of blood, laughter bubbling up like a cauldron of sin and stench of memory. He screamed, kicking out at nothing, tearing at his throat only to open his eyes and find his own hands around his throat, and hear her laughter against his ears once again._

He fell to his knees, gasping for breath, Hyperion clattering to the floor beside him.

"You see how easily I can break you, Knight?" she mused. "You are your own worst weakness. You always have been." Her eyes focused suddenly, and she tilted her head to the side, as if straining to hear some distant music. "Ah. Your little friends have arrived. Now, watch, and see what happens to those that defy me. I'll give you this last chance to learn by example."

He stood, frozen, eyes fixed on the scene, powerless to look away as she forced his eyes open. Adel's lips twitched. "Via discedit, Seifer. Tuum somnium elige. Elige bene."

_The road divides. Choose. Choose well._

Squall entered first from the door to the right, Lionheart a dim blue glow in the half darkness of the chamber. Xu was behind him, weapons drawn and eyes fixed in horror at what the room contained. Martine, Adel…he saw their eyes light in horrified recognition.

He saw Squall's lips move, but no sound came out.

An explosion sounded to the left, followed by Irvine and Zell crashing through the door, followed by a small wave of water behind them. Both were soaked to the bone. Irvine's coat sagged on the floor as he drew Exeter up, pointed directly at Adel.

"The _hell's_ goin' on?"

Squall's eyes were on Seifer, cutting, silently accusing.

Adel was laughing again. "Worthless SeeDs…like lambs you walk to your own slaughter. You have saved me the trouble of hunting you down."

"We beat you once," shouted Selphie, hands glowing with the beginning of a Protect shield. "We can do it again!"

"Really?" mocked Adel. "I seem to remember wearing a certain…_accessory_…last time. Useless girl. Tell me Squall, how is she feeling, now that I've taken a piece of her?"

Squall's grip on his sword tightened.

Just then, Serabin and Selphie entered the room the same way that Irvine and Zell had, similarly soaked and staring in disbelief at the scene before them.

"And Serabin. We meet at last."

Serabin only narrowed his eyes, hands tightening around his guns.

Irvine walked further into the room, his lips thinning as he cocked Exeter with one hand and pointed it directly at Adel.

Squall's eyes narrowed. "Shoot her, Irvine. Shoot her through the heart," Squall was also advancing on the right. The doors slammed shut behind them, and the group jumped and looked behind them. They had walked into a trap. Squall's eyes narrowed as they took in Seifer standing in front of Adel's new form, Hyperion drawn. Disappointment briefly flashed across his dark features before it was replaced again with anger. "Shoot them both."

Seifer looked down. His feet wouldn't move, and neither would his mouth. Adel waved at him as her psychic image faded from his mind.

_Sit. Stay. Good dog._

_I'll be back._

Adel cackled again, eyes flickering to Irvine. "Impetuous cowboy…would you shoot a child?"

A small child, no more than six, walked out from the shadows, dark hair dripping and plastered to his young face. Cherub-like cheeks framed bright blue eyes. He toddled out, still wet from the ReGen tank, naked save for the severed wires that still clung to his skin. The child approached the group slowly, calmly.

"Shoot it, Irvine, damnit!" shouted Squall. "It's a trick!"

The child looked up at Irvine, just feet from the cowboy, who now pointed his rifle at the child, his gaze flickering from Adel to the young creature in front of him.

"It's just a kid…" whispered Irvine.

"My name is Daenen." Said the child, calmly, emotion completely devoid from his voice. "What's yours?"

Irvine narrowed his eyes uncertainly, lowering his rifled slowly as the child walked closer. The gun-slinger leaned over, slightly, hunching down more to the child's level but never taking his eyes fully off Adel. "My name's Irvine, Daenen. Why don't you come over here?"

Seifer looked closer, and saw that the child carried a gun. Brek's gun.

_How the hell did he get it?_

Irvine looked down, and saw it too.

_Too late._

It happened in a flash, with the calamity of a nightmare. Irvine raised his rifle, but it was a reluctant response, even in defense. The child already had the gun raised, and the Irvine was blown back, jacket torn open and blood pouring from the bullet wound in his chest. The child did not blink, only stared straight ahead as he turned towards Squall.

"Irvine!" Selphie's anguished scream echoed through the chamber, drowned out by Adel's laughter.

Zell raised his hand, and in a flash of lightening, the child fell to his knees, unconscious.

"Stulti," spat the Sorceress. The wires that stemmed out of her body flickered to life, snapping from the ceiling in sprays of sparks to curl down towards the SeeDs. "Iam morieris!"

_Fools…_

_…now you die._

Seifer saw it all slowly, like a nightmare he was powerless to stop-

Irvine first, his chest opened up and bleeding everywhere, so much blood and Seifer felt nothing but numb. The cowboy lay sprawled out on the white floor, red pooling onto the tiles…probably dead…

Selphie screaming, charging blindly into battle, tears streaking her face as she advanced on the sorceress, power sparking from her hands as she prepared to cast some form of Ultima. The small SeeD dodged the first few wires, but the third caught her, winding around her skull and pinning her back against the wall with a dull thud, knocking the breath out of her. The spell stalled in her hands, and she screamed, her body shaking. She was stunned but alive, her eyes fixed on Irvine's still form on the floor. She screamed noiselessly for him, thrashing in the wires, but her voice did not stir him.

Xu yelled something to Selphie, but it was lost in the dark roar of Adel's laughter.

Seifer recognized his mistress again in her battle- cut them down slowly, and they will become slow with grief. Adel did not kill immediately, if she could help it. She _played_. The crippled motions of grief amused her.

Xu ducked forward, sliding towards Irvine with a desperate cry as her hands buried themselves in the bloody jacket, Curaga rising in bursts from her fingertips in flashes of light. Light blood burbled up from the chest wound, followed by a hollow, empty wheeze. Shit. _It was in his lungs…_

_The cowboy wasn't moving. _

Squall advanced, slicing at the wires in a wild frenzy that Seifer faintly recalled as his Lion Heart maneuver. Serabin was close behind him, one of his hand guns up and waiting for a clean shot as a dark spell brewed in his palm- most likely Ultima.

Useless. It wouldn't stir her.

Zell reached out, and Thundaga spiraled from the ceiling, causing Adel's form to twitch. A few of the coiled arms snaked back with the force, but soon rejoined their former path, crashing into the martial artist and swiftly pinning him against the wall next to Selphie, hard enough to knock him unconscious.

Idiots. The magic was making her stronger…

Squall fell heavily to his side as one particular wire knocked him down, rolling to his feet. His lips moved again, and the floor shook so heavily that even he fell to his knees, hand extended at Adel. A black mist dampened the floor, pressing Seifer down to his knees. The ReGen tanks shattered, and the blue liquid spilled out, making another Thundaga spell dangerous. Squall had cast a grav-spell, level 2. Another such spell would level the roof of the garden.

Stupid maneuver.

_Grief has made them all careless_….Adel's thought snatched directly out of her mind. But it was true. Gone was the grace and ice of their former moulds- passion and heat drew their weapons now.

And they would lose.

Serabin darted forward, unleashing two clips of pulse ammo directly at Adel's chest in an attempt to take Adel's focus off of Squall, who was now precariously close to getting his head taken off by one of Adel's wildly twisting coils. The bullets bounced off harmlessly, however, and Adel ignored him much like a bird of prey ignores an insect.

One of his guns had jammed, and furious, Serabin tossed it aside. Squall dodged another tendril, and sliced one more in two, yelling at Serabin for a distraction. Narrowing his eyes, Serabin took aim once more, and this time, a single, silver shot sprung directly into Adel's left eye. The red orb exploded, a mix of blood and oil running down her cheek in rivulets. The sorceress screamed, enraged, and one of her limbs whipped around, catching Serabin across the skull as he was attempting to reload. The blow sent him flying clear across the room, where the young man's body crashed into one of the empty ReGen tanks. The glass shards exploded with the blue fluid, sparking in the darkness. Serabin remained still.

"Serabin!" Xu started towards him, Curaga burning in her fists.

"Fools! You think I need eyes to see?" Screaming, Adel's metallic arms rose, slamming into the ceiling. The wall thundered, a few stray rocks tumbling down to reveal a small slice of blue sky. The rubble crashed towards Xu and Irvine, still on the ground, and Xu, on her way to Serabin, quickly threw herself back over Irvine's huddled form, crying out as the debris struck her.

Squall looked up, then quickly began his advance again.

Xu was trapped, holding Irvine's bloody body in her arms and screaming as she desperately tried to free her leg from the rubble that was currently pinning her down. Selphie renewed her struggles, yelling, but was flattened against the wall, held back by the long, snaking wires the neo-sorceress used like limbs.

Squall charged, hand sparking with an ice spell even as he dodged to the side, avoiding Adel's wiry arms as they snaked out to embrace him. Shouting, he lunged, Lionhart thrust out in front of him. One arm caught him, spinning him, but by some miracle, he maintained his balance, spun, and buried his blade in Adel's glistening side. She screamed in fury, reaching out, her wiry appendage slamming him into the floor, curling around his torso and sending him flying in a hazy silver flash.

As the Commander skidded, another tendril coiled around him, snaking around each arm as he attempted to rise. The coils tightened, bringing him to his knees on the floor. Squall resisted, and the coil curled harder, causing the young man to scream as his right arm was broken with a sickening snap. She stared down at him, licking her lips.

**"Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas."**

_Although the power is lacking, the will is commendable. _

Lionhart dropped to the ground with a heavy clang, and Squall screamed again as Adel's silver limb coiled once more, breaking it again, near the wrist. The sorceress's laughter only grew in volume.

"No! Stop it!" screamed Zell, awake now and fighting hard against the wires around his throat, which constricted automatically. Xu was struggling to get up, to no avail, and Zell was stuck, mindful of the crushing metal arm wrapped around his skull. "You fucking bitch, stop it!"

Seifer struggled to move…to think a thought coherently…but all was frozen. They were going to die. All of them. He wanted to laugh….no…he wanted to stop her…

…._didn't he_?

Adel's gaze once again landed on him.

_"Look…I've brought you a little sparrow. His wing is broken, and cannot fly away..."_

Her eyes met his, smiling. She'd brought him a present, a present that not long ago he would have sold his soul to destroy.

Squall looked up at him, a lock of hair falling over his bloody face, his eyes expressionless. Hatred and brotherhood lingered there, and a silent, proud plea that stirred something unfamiliar in his chest. Squall would not beg him, not out loud…but there was still resistance there.

_"Now.__ Finish him_."

**No**.

_Come with me forever. What life is there left for you? They're not your friends. Seifer Almasy has no friends. Come with me._

**No**.

_Kill him! Kill them all!_

Hyperion burned in his palm, the steel hot and hungry, a thirst that traveled the length of his arm and raked at his heart. It was the sorceress' sickness…not his.

No. It was his own. It had always been his own.

_Kill him. You're stronger now. Isn't it what you wanted? His blood on your sword? His life? His power? Take it!_

He saw his future before him in her glittering eyes, and it was long, and dark, and bloody.

He stared at Squall.

_Rival._

_Enemy._

_Brother._

**No**.

"No. I won't do it." He whispered. Squall's eyes widened in shock.

Adel's mind shifted, and suddenly, Seifer saw his father on his knees before him…the dirty stubble on his cheeks and his eyes swimming with liquor-

_You'll have to do better than that._

**FlASh**.

_Hyperion's dim glitter, a river of blood that nearly tore the earth in half. Screams….blood, a red carpet that stretched endlessly into the future-_

No. These were the witch's dreams. Not his. He dug, grasping for something pure, something untouched by her filthy hands-

_Running through a cornfield, the swath of her hair like silk against his hand, and her breath on his neck, hands on his back, lips sweet as they whispered in the darkness, body sweet and gentle beneath his. Her hands clasped his cheeks, and she arched hard beneath him, his name on her lips-_

_…He saw a life beside the ocean, a life simple and sweet without the press of glory on his temples and the burden of power resting between his shoulder blades, saw her face, smiling, welcoming him home, eyes open and blue like the sea, the quiet glory of holding her. Not the kind he had dreamed, once, but the one he wanted now-_

**_FlaSh_**_._

_-He was standing on top of Garden's ruins, Hyperion burning sweetly in his hand like the breast of a lover, hot and hungry, Squall's blood was spilled beneath him, and the world was his-_

No.

Not my dreams...not anymore_. _

He struggled, and she felt his resistance, steel on the silk of her desire. He had never resisted her before. None of them had. Her rage tripled. He screamed as she invaded his mind, ripping him in half on an ethereal plane a thousand times more painful than a mortal wound.

She dug, searched, her nails scoring his memories for the precious little thought that was keeping him upright-

_I can make it hurt you know, little boy. I can make you beg on your knees in your own juices, burning alive with desire as long as I like…I can kill them all, while you watch…would you like that?_

Seifer did not answer, but sullenly fixed his eyes on her, still resisting her.

_Perhaps you'd like to see your mother…would you like that, **boy**? _

And oh, the terrible things she did to his mother in the depths of her twisted mind…"No!" He shrank back again, gripping his skull. "Stop it!"

He shrunk against the walls of his mind, huddled like he had once huddled against the shadows of a card table.

She would take his memories, and twist them beyond recognition, make him see things that never happened, and some that had, and all were terrible…

_His mother was lying on the bed, smiling, reaching out her hands to him, sunlight on her face from the window…_

_…Then she was alone in the room, thrashing against the sheets and delirious with pain…and she was reaching out again, reaching out to her little boy to save her from the pain, but he was too weak, lying beneath the card table, his blood spilling out onto the linoleum-_

_Rinoa, her lips on his, sweet and soft….Rinoa as she turned, smiling…Rinoa crying as he pushed her steadily towards Adel's awaiting arms…_

_Edea__, mother, lover, her body bare beneath the moonlight, eyes burning with a fire that scorched his skin as she punished him for his failure-_

_Fujin__, dead beneath the stone, her single eye scared and sad and begging him-_

_Quistis, laid open in the frozen field, his name on her lips, her hands on his cheeks, begging him-_

He shut his eyes, grounding his fists against the sockets. "None of this is real!" he screamed, thrashing out against her barbed presence across his temples, snaking into his brain like a maggot… "You can't break me with my own fucking memories!"

_No_?

_His mother.__ She was walking through the garden, as she had before the sickness claimed her. She held out her hand, bowing a little, as she used to. Not mocking, playful. "Dance with me, Seifer." _

_No…no…she's dead._

He shook his head, backing up, away from the siren that so convincingly wore his mother's face.

_The image fuzzed, and Rinoa stood before him, a glittering red dress sculpted to her body. She held out her hand, raven locks sloping over her shoulders. "Dance with me?" she asked, smiling her sweet smile, as she had during that summer-_

He turned, reeling, digging his hands into his skull.

_Fujin__, whole, beautiful, dressed in white, holding out her hands. "Dance…"_

No, no, no….she's dead, she's dead, damnit…

**"Open your eyes, Seifer."**

_Quistis.__ She was dressed in the same long overcoat, the zippered peach suit, hair wild and flowing about her face, ankle-deep in the snow. Her eyes were calm, warm, lit with the sadness and lust as they had been that day in Balamb. _

_Dance with me, Seifer._

_Save me._

_He reached out his hand, nearly touching hers, but drew back in an instant. She was smiling, but there was something sinister on her lips._

_Not Quistis._

_He lunged forward, thrusting Hyperion through the wraith. The figure screamed-_

_…and turned to ashes. _

**_Too close._**

His resolve was weakening. She wore his ghosts too well, and he was so tired…

_Would you like to see her as she really is? Your little angel?_

_An image formed in his mind, white walls and a small cot. Quistis slept, hair tangled around numerous wires hooked up to her skull, chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm. The image flashed, and suddenly, he saw his mother lying there, her face pale and ghostly…still like death…_

**Flash**.

_Quistis again, lying tangled up in blood and shattered steel on the battlefield. She lay stunned like a fallen bird, her wings in tatters beneath her, staring blankly up at the cold sky. Snow was falling around her, but the white did not hold for long. Red spread out around her. Her blood. _

_Her life._

**_Ending…_**

_"You could not save your mother. You cannot save her."_

_"No." he whispered. "Don't you fucking touch her!"_

_"Why?" she asked, her presence close in his mind. So _**very**_ close. "Seifer Almasy doesn't love anyone. She's just another drop in the bucket. Isn't that what you told her? Weren't those your last words to her?"_

_"No, she…"_

_"She would have betrayed you!" snarled Adel. "Just the way they all betrayed you. Your mother, Edea, precious Rinoa…they all left you… all deserted you…"_

**No! She stayed. She would have stayed.**

_Quistis, bare and beautiful in the dark, the flat muscles of her stomach stretched taut as she bowed back, hall falling in a silver moonlit sheath down her back. Her eyes were closed, hands splayed across his chest, her body shaking like the silk of her hair between his fingers… _

_Holding her in that same clean darkness, her mouth tracing silent patterns on his skin, her body slick and soft beneath him-_

**How sweet. A knight and his angel, hmm? A beggar and his willing whore…**

**It wasn't like that.**

**No?**

_Quistis, lying on her side beside him, head tucked between the crook of his jaw and his shoulder. Her breath stirring along his chest, soft and sweet like the kiss of hummingbird wings. The scent of raspberries and salt and sweat mixed in the air, the sweet aroma of sex and her shampoo. He leaned the side of his cheek into her hair, and closed his eyes at the sound of her sigh…He held her in the embers of dawn and felt as if, maybe, he could try to be a good man-_

**A good man…what do you know about good men? Did daddy teach you?**

_Get out of my head! These are **my** memories! **My** life!_

He could still feel Adel through it all, the sweet memory tainted by her mocking presence.

_The memory cleared again, and they were back on Esthar's bloody battlefield. Adel stood over Quistis' body, staring down at the golden-haired girl. Or what was left of her. "Sweet, noble Quistis. She was too weak. The Skeleton boy abhorred weakness, did he not? How could you love her? How could you love her, really?" purred Adel. "Half of you hated her."_

_"Don't lay a hand on her, you fucking witch!" he shouted, angry, tearing at her presence._

The sorceress's temper exploded, the rage of a spider whose insect still struggle to be free.

"_Now, if this emotion you humans cling to is so all-powerful, theoretically, I should not be able to kill her. The power of this feeling should keep her, stay her. The strength of your love should keep her heart beating." continued Adel. "This all powerful…love, as you call it, should conquer all, should it not?"_

Was this a dream? Another one of Adel's tricks? He couldn't tell anymore. The smell, the feel of it was poignant and sharp in his senses…and so was the pain. That was the horror of the witch's mind. All things were possible even as no things were possible.

_Adel reached down, to stroke the pale cheek of the young woman. "You stayed by her side all night, didn't you?" She chuckled, cocking her head as she gazed down at the sleeping soldier. "Another thing I will never understand about you humans. Hope. It is your greatest strength, and yet, your greatest fallacy. You are crushed, defeated, dying…and still you hope. You crawl for it. You cling to it. Your world collapses, and your torture your mind with dreams that will never be, can never be. Hope." The sorceress spat the word. "It is your poison, and you gulp it like a man dying of thirst." Her fingers tightened around Quistis' bloody neck. "She is your hope, isn't she? Then let me save you from her."_

_"Don't touch her!" he screamed. "Don't you fucking touch her!"_

_Adel looked up at him, eyes searching and accusing. "Fool." She spat. "What you once understood, you have forgotten. There are two forces in this world. Power and weakness. Supremacy, and surrender, and two forms of life to compliment it. Those that refuse power are fools, not heroes." Adel sneered. "Cid was a fool, and soon, he will be dead. And so will she.""_

_Seifer shook his head, Hyperion once again raised. "No! I'll kill you-I'll kill myself-"_

_"Now, dear knight, don't be hasty. Let us test this all-powerful love that you mortals manufacture for yourselves, shall we?" She snapped her fingers, and instantly, he was back in Esthar's marred fields, holding her in his arms, rain soaking into his arms as he screamed for her to wake up. _

_Quistis, shivering in his arms, body hot and firm beneath his, breathing his name-_

_Quistis, shivering in his arms, blood pouring from her mouth, not breathing at all-_

**It isn't real…none of this is real…**

_Quistis, lying in a cot, hooked up to wires and sleeping-_

_He started forward, but Adel held him back. "If you love her, make her a phoenix. A phoenix that will rise up from her ashes, and love you again. Is the power of love not great enough to overcome death itself? Make her a phoenix. Can you live if she does not rise? Ask yourself."_

_The line in the machine jumped, and then went flat…_

_And she wasn't breathing. She was still, and cold, and silent. _

_Adel was laughing._

_He dropped to his knees, Hyperion clattering to the floor beside him. His head bowed._

_Hands gently grazed his shoulders, the palms burning like fire on his skin. "Do you know what her last thoughts were, on that battlefield? She prayed to Hyne…She prayed to Hyne for the strength to save her friends, to die with honor." She laughed. "Pathetic!"_

_Seifer struggled to be free. He struggled to stand. All he needed was a moment, for her to become distracted, just for a second-_

_Adel's mind was clearing now, however, the rage fading from her thoughts. "Foolish girl. She is better dead."_

_He got to his feet slowly, heart beating an unsteady rhythm in his head as she released him. _

_"And what would you have given her, really, Seifer? Your failed legacy?"_

_He turned to see Adel, standing as she once was again, a young woman with red hair rippling to her waist, ruby eyes glittering in the fires behind her. _

_"I'm sorry, my dear boy…a knight can only have one Queen."_

_Seifer reeled, madness tainting his gaze and his entire being shaken. "That's not real! She isn't dead! She isn't fucking dead!" _

_The sorceress shook her head slowly from side to side, laughing as the scene disappeared._

_Seifer pointed Hyperion at her, chest heaving as the room spun around him, tears burning in his eyes. "I'll kill you! **I'll fucking kill you!**" _

**I think not**_. Adel's voice. _**You are mine, now.**

_Filiolus__._

**No**.

_He saw red, the heat boiling in his veins and pouring into the handle of the sword, the steel hot in his palm, the familiar fire surging in his veins like poetry. Power, lust, greed, love…Crimson petals rained on his face, the bloody flowers falling from the sky like rain. He opened his eyes._

_Fire Cross. It was boiling in him, throbbing like a heartbeat._

The future and the past split before him, his Queen behind him and his rival on his knees before him, cold blue eyes glittering in the sparks that fell against his cheeks. Two roads, but only one could be taken, and he could never look back. Kill her. Kill Squall.

Squall met his gaze, his own eyes cold and defiant before staring down at the floor, breath quick with pain.

_He could never go back. _

It boiled through his blood faster than thought, and with every ounce of energy left in him, with every painful pulsation of his heart, he lifted Hyperion, the sword's glow dull in the light of the wiry fibers of his Queen. In his eyes was a very familiar look. Madness.

Adel smiled. "Acta est fibula, plaudite."

_The play is over. Applaud_.

With that, she put her two human hands together, the mocking sound of a clap resounding through the dark, dank room.

…

…

…

For the first time in her life, Xu was terrified of the battle. Not so much what harm would come to her…but what harm would come after they were dead.

The sorceress did not appear in any hurry to take action, having her prey lined up just the way she liked it, and Seifer looked out of his mind, alternately shouting and clawing at his skull.

Xu grimaced as another wave of pain shot through her leg, which was likely broken. Irvine grappled for life beneath her, his breathing shallow, heartbeat slowing rapidly. He was in shock, and fading fast, despite her efforts. She looked up again towards the front of the room, where Almasy was still crouching as still as stone, eyes haunted and tortured sounds occasionally breaking from his lips. Some battle was clearly going on between sorceress and knight…a battle Xu herself couldn't see, only sense. If he was fighting her, then there was hope. If he wasn't, then…..

It was over…

"Get up, Almasy!" she shouted. "_Get fucking_ **up**_ and do something_!"

But Almasy was not moving.

"Hyne help us," muttered Xu.

Adel hissed, a gutteral growl that tumbled menacingly from her half-metallic throat. "Fools! The god of men is dead! Hyne has created man's destruction, not his salvation!"

But Xu kept her eyes trained on Seifer, even as Irvine Kinneas' nearly lifeless form squirmed in her arms. Movement. Seifer shook himself, as if coming awake, narrowing his eyes as he picked up Hyperion once again from the floor.

Xu held her breath as she watched Hyperion arc down towards Squall, a flash of steel, quick and without hesitation, hovering slightly above Leonhart's shoulders.

Adel's gaze was filled with pleasure. "Yes, that's it, my son…become your destiny. Make them bleed. Make them suffer."

Seifer's arm seemed to snap up with a life of its own, its blade glinting in the harsh light. Flame poured from his hand, wrapping around the metal of the sword like a collection of fiery vines and lighting his eyes in a strange glow. It was his limit, but not a form that any of them had ever seen.

He met Squall's eyes for a moment, and smiled. It was the same insane smile that had lit his face at the parade.

Xu watched, frozen, as Seifer swung. Squall closed his eyes. Selphie screamed, and Zell, too, closed his eyes-

The fiery sword arced towards Squall's skull, a flash of light and fury-

Xu grimaced, tears burning in her eyes.

_We're all going to die, and the world with us-_

…

…

…

The darkness was strange here, an almost foreign substance that clung to his skin. Xu's voice bounced dimly off of the skin of his concentration…Adel's low, throaty murmur swam in his brain like a lazy acid, burning and rippling.

_Was he awake? _

_Was he dreaming?_

_Did it matter?_

The darkness whispered, a living skin of sound and memory that called, beckoned. Each murky cell, each distant pore of that darkness was a doorway, and if he moved in any direction, he would be lost forever. It was the same dark maze that had existed in Ultimecia's shriveled heart- one that now wove through his own. It was the same darkness that now beat in his breast-the rhythm of the skeleton boy. It was the echo of his madness.

He looked down at his hands, and the image fuzzed, from gloved to bare to bloody. He blinked, and they returned to normal.

There was a single light in the darkness, a silver sliver that lay on the floor in front of him. Hyperion.

Swords were like humans, born innocent in flame and naked steel, then contaminated by desire. Hyperion's song was pure, and dark. It was good. It was evil. More than metal.

A choice.

He could not undo the past. It was forged in blood and fire, and his skin would carry its taint till he died. Was he forever cast in that mold, then? Forever destined to fight and fall by the same blade? Or could one forge one's destiny again…melt down the sin and sanctify that good the remained? Could good exist in Hyperion? Could good exist in him?

_Good for nothing **boy**-_

_You are forever tainted, forever mine-_

My boy is dead. He died with his mother-

_Dark._

SEIFER. LIVE-

**…….I believe in you. I have always believed in you-**

He narrowed his eyes.

_…Transit umbra, lux permanent…._

He leaned over, hand once again closing around Hyperion's curved handle, the steel burning in his palm.

He opened his eyes, looking out at what remained of the once legendary SeeDs. Xu, pinned beneath the stone, screaming at him to do something. Irvine, body twisted and bloody, hands sprawled out at his sides, blood on his lips. Selphie, kicking in Adel's grip, tears coursing down her face, and Zell, fighting next to her, gloves barely denting Adel's steel limbs. Adel was smiling, the calm, arrogant smile of the victorious.

Seifer struggled for breath, straightening to his full height as he looked down at Squall's writhing form. Their eyes sunk into one another's and Squall at once stopped struggling as he saw the look in Seifer's eyes.

He had made his choice.

Squall bowed his head, hair hanging in his eyes as he shut them in preparation.

He swung, clearing all sensation for one brief, painfully clear moment-

_Running, running through those golden fields, he reached his hand out to catch the golden swath ahead of him-_

_The corn rows parted, and the crows flew up, wings turning to gold in the light of the sun,-_

_The sword was glowing, hotter, hot-_

Squall closed his eyes just before the sword whirred past his skull-

-and came cleanly around to bury its silver fang into Adel's metallic chest.

Adel screamed in surprise and pain, her voice a hollow, fierce sound that filled up the room, shaking the walls as sparks poured like blood from her open wound. With a snarl she sent Seifer sprawling back, her metal claws digging into his chest and releasing Squall in the process, but Seifer caught himself, clutching his shoulder as he flicked Hyperion back up to his waist and brought it up for another clean swipe, tearing the blade across the wiry sinew of the Sorceresses' neck and spraying blood and oil down onto the floor below.

Squall was on his feet in an instant, Lionhart in his left hand as he tore it across the sorceress' left appendage, jumping back just as a fierce Thundaga spell poured from the open wound like sparking, electric puss.

Xu held tightly to Irvine, his blood seeping through her fingers as he trembled along with the rest of Galbadia's walls. Sparks rained down, sharp against her cheeks and she cast Curaga once more on Irvine's gory chest, trying desperately to close the skin over his rib cage with each cooling rush of magic. Irvine moaned, eyes rolling at the ceiling.

Xu leaned over him. "Wake up, cowboy! Wake _up_!"

The ceiling rumbled, spitting hunks of marble down on the now highly vulnerable collection of SeeDs. Sorceresses did not die softly.

Screeching and thrashing her now nearly severed arms out in desperate directions, spewing a crimson oil all over the struggling SeeDs before her, she cursed and screamed in native tongues long dead, her voice distorting and changing as each possession passed through her lips, out into a new host somewhere in time.

Selphie had freed herself from the wall, and was calling forth a barrage of Reflect spells, the green light engulfing the group as the almost metallic, resistant shield hung tangibly in the air, sprays of rock and metal echoing off the shield in flurries of sparks.

Seifer, however, was in more trouble, caught in the sorceresses' metal jaws. He kicked out, but the wiry tentacles wrapped tighter around his waist, bringing him closer.

"**Traitor**!" screamed Adel, her metallic voice nearly shattering his eardrums as her eyes bored into those of her faithless knight. Seifer struggled, but the coils were around his arms, cutting off the circulation even as they tore at the muscle beneath.

"Praebui tibi sedes piorum." She hissed, arms raised to take him with her.

"Sic transit gloria mundis." He spat back, and straining against every hurting fiber in his body, he launched forward, kicking with all of his might at the coil binding his sword arm and granting him a momentary lapse. He lurched in her grip, Hyperion trailing not far behind his newly freed arm-

Squall looked up in time to see Seifer's sword arc, the flaming blade lighting his eyes in an almost ethereal glow as the young man lunged in Adel's grip, falling, the sword's silver path cutting down in a blaze of fire and light. He had never seen a fire spell burn so bright…it was almost…otherworldly. Not Fira….something greater.

Seifer yelled something, but the words were lost in the tremor of the Garden collapsing.

The ex-knight's aim was true. Adel, or whatever part of the machine was still Adel, shrieked an instant before Hyperion ripped the last bit of cable, sinew, and shadow that held the Sorceress' body together, smashing into her heart into a rain of sparks. A hot, sharp current raced through his arm, and he watched the sword shatter.

Hyperion's silver light rained across both figures as a blinding beam encapsulated the room, the horrible scream expanding with it.

Suddenly, the unearthly cry stopped altogether, the chord suspended in the air like an unfinished symphony .The creature's arms convulsed in a spray of bright shards and oil, throwing the young man clear across the room and into the wall.

"Seifer!" shouted Squall, starting forward and gripping his own broken arm, but the aftershock of the explosion knocked him sprawling and drowned out his shout into nothing.

The sorceress' now lifeless body and the mechanical cocoon that harbored her heaved forward, sparks blinding as wires snapped and groaned free. A crash, followed by several following explosions thundered through Galbadia's torn left wing as the body of the sorceress fell with a terrible, metallic scream. Another explosion cracked the structure, this one external to the building. The ceiling crumbled away, the chunks giving way to a bright blue sky, sunlight stinging Squall's eyes.

Ragnarok hovered in the newly opened ceiling gap, hatch open and Arya holding tight to the banister, her hair flipping wildly around her face as she threw a collection of ropes down the hatch ladder. "Quick!" she shouted. "It's going down!" Another explosion seemed to wrack through the entire garden, and Squall nearly lost his balance. He felt an arm beneath him, and looked to find Selphie, her nunchaku wound around a railing, her grip nearly white on both her weapon and his arm. Zell and Xu were struggling with Irvine's limp form, dragging him towards the opened roof, Zell limping and a bloody river running down the side of Xu's face.

"Get the child!" he shouted. "Get Serabin! Where are the others!"

Xu looked around. "Where's Seifer!"

_Seifer_….

"Seifer!" shouted Squall, looking wildly around. "_Seifer_!"

Seifer stared up at the ceiling, at the way the sunlight tore through the crumbling ceilings. His vision blurred, spun…light twisting into strands of flaxen hair in an emerald field. He reached for the light, bloodied fingers swallowed in golden silk as he sank into oblivion, her name on his lips.


	33. Hopes and Dreamscapes

Author's Note: Well, here it is. After hours of thinking and rethinking, I've finally managed to turn out something that my betas (a million thanks) both think doesn't suck terribly.. Many thanks to MadHattess, for all her help and music recommendations. The same goes to Yori- Hoobastank's 'The Reason' is a great Seifer/Quistis song- thanks! I've been listening to it lately. To Liz and Jes, and the rest of my AOL buddies, many thanks for keeping me on my toes. To everyone who's read and reviewed, a thousand thanks as well. Your feedback means a lot. Without further ado, I give you chapter whateveritis. I've lost track of the numbering.l

Note: I'm going in a different direction than I did with some of the couples originally- this was one of the things I looked back on in the story and really wanted to change. So, from here on out, in more than one situation and plotline, this story will deviate out into the realms I wished I had nudged it in the first place.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the keys beneath my fingers and my sick imagination. Listen to some Joe Hedges for this chapter- it's mellow/sad and I find that it works well here.

Well, I could sleep forever,  
But it's of her I dream.  
If I could sleep forever,  
I could forget about everything

If I could sleep forever…  
-Dandy Warhols, Sleep

sleep

through monochrome days

savor the blue in your eyes

the earth in your gaze

there's blood in the sky

blood in the sky

blood is the sky

-Telescope Eyes, by Joe Hedges

Chapter 33

**…Wake up.**

**It was a familiar dark…but it was not a friendly dark. **

Smooth stone beneath his body. Cold stone against his fevered flesh and he was falling, falling into a dark place were the screams were fading-

His screams….someone else's?

"The body is weak. The will must be strong. Make the will stronger. Make the flesh worthy." A voice far away, but drawing closer- a light ripping through a train tunnel.

More pain shot through his spine, and he thought he screamed again, but he wasn't sure. The only thing he could hear was that voice, slow and infuriatingly calm. "Blood of my spirit to flesh of my heir, fading dusk to rising son."

Whose voice was that? It seemed to stretch on forever. He wanted it to go away.

He wanted to go back to the golden fields…

_The corn fields…..light stretching through the stalks, and he was curled up, hiding from dear old daddy…._

_Daddy, wandering through the cornfields with a flask of brandy…_

_"Where are ya, **BOY**? Git out here, you worthless chickenshit…"_

**No…not those fields. The ones in my dreams.**

"Wake up…wake up boy…"

Voice again….rising back up to the voice again…

"Blood to flesh and flesh to spirit-"

He bit down on the inside of his cheek as another wave of pain shot through his entire body, pooling into a dull throb in his arm.

**Cut it off.**

He screamed again, but there was no use. The pain wouldn't end. A wave of bile lodged in his throat and he bit hard on the inside of his mouth as the warm acid pooled in his cheek, spilling out onto something soft beneath him.

"Let me die…." His own voice, almost recognizable. "…let me die…"

It was all he could say. It was all he wanted.

Quiet now, and the pain was rising up like a wave, and he was sinking, **sinking**…

…the voice above him was fading away…

"Let the blood of dead heroes…wake this spirit from his sleep…"

He slumped back down as a sudden calm settled over him, devoid of the sound and pained fury that previously pounded in his body. He felt his own blood seep through his teeth and pool on his tongue, and the low murmuring above him buzzed in his ears.

Turning his head, he prayed to a god he had never believed in to die.

……………………………………………………………………..

…

…

…

There comes a moment in which the human soul can stand no more grief or pain- in these moments, the mind shuts itself down into a kind of numb slumber, a melancholy stasis that feels neither pain nor joy. The heart beats, but it is an empty echo. It is music without meaning.

The group that gathered in Tromedia's hospital waiting room was filled with empty echoes…and the occasional distant page to the emergency room. SeeDs, junior classmen, and family and friends were spread out across the small, cramped rooms, draped across furniture and propped up on the floor. Each breath was a toneless symphony, a requiem dedicated to the fallen.

Hospital waiting rooms are not built with grief in mind. Impersonal flowered wallpaper set in mauves and light vermilions spread out across the confined space, and soft elevator music played as dimly as a piano underwater. A tissue dispenser had long ago been relieved of its contents, which lay scattered and crumpled across the horrible pale, pink carpeting. A stack of magazines was spread out across an old oak table, and uncomfortable furniture sat in random corners. Shades had been drawn, and the soft sighs of sleeping rose and fell like the lazy beat of an ocean current. The SeeD had moved to the Tromedian hospital after news of the mission, and those that did not require constant treatment were confined to the waiting room.

Rinoa Heartily was sleeping with her cheek against the hard edge of a coffee table after being heavily sedated and treated for severe vertigo and disorientation. It had taken them quite awhile to convince the medical teams that the young sorceress was not suffering from dementia or head trauma, but exhaustion. It seemed she was coming back to herself- slowly, groggily, as if coming awake after a long sleep. In a way, she was.

Xu Lee Chang was draped across a particularly ugly vermilion chair, her hand curled against one injured cheek. Her face was covered in scratches, and a large burn traveled from her ear to her neck. She was suffering a slight case of mag-poisoning from her ministrations to Kinneas, and as a result, was vomiting sporadically in a small plastic bucket and wondering how the hell Quistis had managed to get though an hour of it. The front of her jacket was soaked in Kinneas' blood, and she was shaking so badly that she could barely speak. Her leg, broken in two places, was set in a cast and propped up on the small arm of the chair.

She was in the best shape out of all of them.

Arya Delnoir was curled on the floor, wearing gauze bandages strapped to either side of her head, a small laptop opened at her feet. Her head was pressed against the back of the couch, and she was snoring softly. After spending two hours in the ER being checked for internal injuries and being shouted at by the doctors (mainly because she couldn't hear a thing, but also because she initially refused treatment), the doctors had released her on the condition that she would stay on the premises for the next 48 hours (and stop shouting).

Serabin Glyphias was currently receiving a CAT scan to check for brain trauma, as well as a myriad of stitches to sew his head back together. Needless to say, he was not currently in the most coherent of states.

Squall Leonhart fared no better, as he was in intensive care, having his arm –broken in six places- set in pins. The staff had been amazed that he'd been able to walk through the doors, but he had wanted to check on Rinoa and no amount of persuasion could delay him.

Irvine Kinneas was still in the OR, the diagnosis resting on fate alone. Miss Tilmitt had been subsequently been tranquillized on the Ragnarok for hysteria, and really, it was just as well. Things were not looking good for Irvine. He had apparently suffered a bullet in the lungs, and the subsequent inflation of the tissue had caused significant blood loss. Xu had performed an emergency siphon using a hollow metal tube from one of her own guns, but the surgery had been unsanitary butchery at best. Irvine was suffering initially from a hemopneumothorax, and the doctor's attempts to drain the fluid from his lungs had caused a subsequent cardiac tamponade, or a heart so stuffed with fluid it was scarcely beating. The young cowboy's chest had been cracked open like a lobster, and Kinneas was currently receiving a massive amount of blood transfusions. Prognosis was uncertain. Zell Dinct, who had suffered a shattered tibia and a broken kneecap in the escape, was currently next in line for a cast. Other soldiers filled the waiting rooms, sprawled across furniture and sleeping restlessly.

All were in various states of shock. Dr. Kadowaki had overseen most of the operations until her own pain medication ran out. She was now out cold at the far end of the couch, her leg in a fresh, real cast propped up against a coffee table.

Two living children that had been rescued from G. Garden, and Dr. Odine, were now in Estharian hands, were being attended to. (Although, it could be safely said that Odine was being treated in a less friendly and concerned manner.)

Edea Kramer sat in the furthest corner, the only one still awake. As a surrogate parent and therefore used to keeping the strange and sporadic hours of a mother, she was left to tend the quiet hours of morning, and to gather the ashes of her own grief in order to face those of her children when they awoke.

She gazed at the remainder of her family, spread out in the small room, and felt, not for the first time, a sense of guilt in her chest so heavy that it seemed to outweigh everything else. This was the nursery she had made for her children. A cradle of blood and suffering. She had taken wingless sparrows and made them into raptors...and thrown them into a sky of knives.

She turned to stare out the window, watching the sunrise. It was a new beginning, but of what she was no longer certain. She glanced down into her hand, where she clutched a blue satin ribbon. Curled in her palm and warm from the heat of her hand. It was a small bronze medal, one she had found rifling through Cid's old paperwork with trembling hands for his Last Rite documents before she departed to Balamb.

The box had spilled out of the closet onto the floor, scattering old photographs, a few old wrappers, and a large, tarnished medal with a blue satin band. Old letters home, birth certificates, death certificates. She would have to give those birth certificates to the children, when she remembered. She had been through hell and high water to get ahold of them.

Pictures there, also, of a young man with brown hair and a soft smile, a gun draped across his shoulder and looking out of place on him. The medal read:

_To Cid R. Kramer, for his valor and honor in battle. _

A bronze star- the highest honor awarded to any government soldier. Trembling, she rubbed a cloth across the medallion's surface until it shone.

She distracted her grief by staring at the play of light on the metal in the early fires of the sun.

_Cid Kramer at her doorstop, his clumsy hands filled with lilacs and a foolish grin on his face, bowing respectfully when she came to the door and standing like a timid, courteous boy when she entered the room-_

_Seifer Almasy, sleeping under the kitchen table those first few days, his troubled green eyes peeking through the chair legs as his uneven breath wheezed through his battered body-_

Seifer_. _Seifer Almasy, buried under Galbadia Garden's rubble, his last swansong filled with a hero's fading fanfare-

Edea took a deep breath. She would not grieve for them now. She could not. If she let one tear fall for him, she would cry for all of them, and the tears would never stop.

_Think of your children, Edea. Think of the ones that are still with you._

_Selphie…Zell….Squall…her wounded sparrows. _

_Quistis…_

Quistis. Old words of Cid's came to mind-

_-watching Quistis Trepe behind the glass. _

_Her hair was cut at butchered angles, stuck to her face in clumps and hanging in her eyes. She kept her arms close to her sides, a wounded animal holding herself close and tight like a clam shut up to the sea around it. Bright blue eyes glanced nervously around the room as Dr. Kadowaki looked her over, horror barely concealed on the older woman's face. _

_"Please…" said the little girl. "Don't send me back…I'll work hard…I won't get in the way…I could help out with the cleaning, or I could help in the cafeteria-"_

It was one of the few times Edea had ever seen Cid loose his composure as he turned from the window and kicked over a folding chair, his shoulders shaking.

_He'd turned to her then, Quistis' admittance papers in his hand.. "There are two types of soldiers in this establishment, Edea. Born fighters and trained fighters. A trained fighter is one whose blood can be molded to discipline, but does not innately possess it. His mind adapts and clings to structure because his life before has lacked it or because its purpose serves him now. His servitude is therefore born of emotion or self-service. He must be made to fight. He serves the thing to his own ends, and in serving the object, his alliance is not permanent. Right and wrong can be taught. He is a mercenary, reasonable, flexible, and fickle. _

_A born fighter's blood is something else entirely. A born fighter's blood serves itself- it seeks out order and permanence that mirrors the structures that it creates in its own mental utopias. Right and wrong are cemented concepts, things that are learned once and learned once only. Servitude or loyalty, if attained, is permanent and absolute. A born fighter accepts battle as an inevitability, and fights to fulfill an internal concept of right and wrong as an external balance at any cost. It is a tireless tenacity- an ant that fights with missing limbs, if you will. A born fighter is a soldier- steadfast, stubborn, and loyal to death… _

_…Quistis will be loyal to us until she dies."_

She now knew the difference, and it lay in her two most different children. Seifer Almasy was an example of a trained fighter…his morality capricious and his flexibility infinite. He could turn his back on one ideal to accept another. He was a quicksilver knight, his blade and heart a beautiful, fickle flash.

Quistis….Quistis had always been precocious. Steadfast. The others had always turned to her for security and dependability. She was their stone, the stable presence that had wavered outwardly in her own insecurities but had never strayed from her own loyal heart.

But unlike Seifer, Quistis' battle was not yet over.

When she had unplugged the machine, removed the breathing tube, there had been a rush of breath that broke from the girl's lips as she pulled Quistis' cord- the expectant hush before the lines on her heart monitor dropped slowly down into a flat, listless line.

Edea's body had waited, then, coiled like a grieving spring, as the last of her surrogate daughter's breath fell through her lips- her body sinking into that expectant pit of anguish-

And then the pale, battered girl on the cot beside her breathed **in**.

In. It was impossible. And yet…

Edea could not summon any surprise.

It was a raspy, faint breath, like the beat of butterfly wings. Weak, but steady.

Edea shifted in her seat. The waiting was unbearable. It was a two thousand ton weight that hung over her head, swaying on every breath that Quistis Trepe took and let out...on every second those doctors stayed in the OR with Irvine, and every minute that passed by Cid's bedside. The doctors shook their heads, and said that it would only be a matter of time. Edea ignored them, and clung to the last shred of hope she retained.

That there in Balamb's hospital room, breathing slowly but independently, Quistis Trepe continued to prove Cid Kramer right.

Edea looked down at the tarnished star in her hand.

I will give it to her if-

…**when**...when she awakes.

……………………………………………………………………………………

…

…

…

She drifted in and out of consciousness at his bedside, the beep of his heart monitor keeping the time. She was only allowed a few hours- he was in the ICU and his condition remained unstable. Serious, at best, the nurses had said. She threaded her fingers through his, mindful of the cuff on his finger. She'd set his spare cowboy hat on his bedside table- he'd want it when he awoke. It was strange to look at him without his hat, to see his beautiful face without the shade of the leather brim and to see his loose auburn curls spilled across the thin white hospital pillow. Occasionally, she leaned over and smoothed a lock of his hair, or moistened his lips with some glycerin the nurses kept in a small glass jar on the bedside table. She hummed, she tried to read. Mostly, she watched him sleep.

She had almost lost him.

She was always going to lose him, anyway.

She had felt it for a year now- she had felt the distance expanding between them like a door left open, letting in a draft. She thought he felt it too, but they had gone about their normal routines- laughing, yelling, fucking, because neither of them was ready to let go. He womanized, he screwed up, and he always returned to her, like a puppy, because their ties ran the length of years- because, at the end of the day, he was hers.

She prided herself on her honesty, and it extended to herself. She did not lie to herself, not even when it would be convenient, not even when she wished things were otherwise. She knew that he loved her, and she knew that she loved him, would always love him. She also knew that it would never be enough. He needed a woman that was fire and air, a woman that would leave him before he left her, because he could never stay for long. He needed a shotgun wedding and a wife that would die on him, because he needed a love that could remain forever and whole and a fairytale. He needed a love that left him before he could leave it.

He truly was a knight- he was meant to fight dragons and rescue damsels- he was meant to ride into the sunset, far away- he was not meant to work through a mortgage and slough through a 9 to 5 existence. She had searched him, once, for traces of domesticity, and she had known for a long time that it was not in him to be domesticated.

She had searched herself, too, and found that she was getting tired of chasing him, of waiting up for him- she found that she could not be a fairytale, and that she did not want to be. It was not in her to chase dreams all of her life, or to run from nightmares. Her capacity for life as a SeeD was ending, and so was her time with him.

It did not make her love him any less- he was hers and she would love him forever, and, probably, somewhere in the back of her heart there would always be a part of her that waited for him to grow up, to come and grow old with her. But she was getting older, and wiser, and found that the majority of her did not want to fight forever. She did not have the stamina to be a soldier, while he seemed molded to it. She did not want to continue to wait for a day when she would slip, even for a second, and see herself or one of her friends killed- she wanted her heart to settle and to build something solid in which it could safely reside.

His heart would never be still.

Left with the truth, she had already decided. She was going to love him until the distance became too far for her to reach him, and she then would let him go. The Messenger Girl and the Cowboy would have their day in the sun, and it would be glorious and sweet and everything to her- and then it would end.

She took his cold hand and brought it to her lips, tears on her cheek and resignation in her heart. She would see him healed, and whole, and she would help him through this-

-and then she would leave him, before he could leave her.

Sniffling, she brought the back of her hand across her eyes, glad no one was here or awake to see her cry.

When he woke up, he would see her as she had always been, bright and cheerful and wearing her best smile, just for him, for as long as he needed her.

After all, a part of her would always be his girl.

…

…

…

Heaven.

The warm salt spray of the ocean and the cool, even air that swept across the sand curling around his feet. The sea. The orphanage. The laughter of children bubbling up like champagne into a powder blue sky. And angels, everywhere, with their creepy cherub faces and powder white wings…

The damned angels were hitting him in the face.

"Wake up, you son of bitch! Wake up!" Light stung his eyes, and he felt the dark rumble of an engine beneath him, warm and soothing for an instant before the pain broke over, crashing down through his body like a spike of lightening.

Fuck. _Fuck….His spine was **on fucking fire**…._

He woke up with the thunder of an engine his ears, an angry face looming over him and hands shaking him by the collar, fists bloody against his jacket.

"I'll kill you myself before I let you die, you worthless dog. Come on!" Wrinkled hands were burning into his neck even as they cooled. Hands on his chest now. Curaga, pumping through him like liquid ice.

"Cold." He coughed, gritting his teeth at the unexpected rush of pain in his right shoulder. "…'s cold…"

**Darkness**.

The fever swam in him- it was alive, and it was everywhere. It lurched in his stomach and sank its hot hooks into his muscles, forking through him in painful spurts.

"…welcome to redemption."

**Redemption?**

His own voice, from far away. "Redemption…thought this was Hell."

A chuckle. "They are the same."

Dark again.

…………………………………….

…

…

…

"Things aren't looking good."

Xu was sitting in a lime green hospital chair across from Squall's hospital bed, a grave look etched on her normally stoic face. Squall was sitting up in the hospital cot, his arm draped along the side and set with painful looking pins.

"Cid isn't going to make it, Squall. You know that. We all know that."

Squall sighed. "Yeah. I know."

Somewhere, a machine was beeping, and someone shouted across the hall. Carts wheeling around…monitors…Squall struggled to think through the pain medication.

"Someone has to take the position of headmaster. The Supreme Council is going to meet-"

Squall narrowed his eyes. "The Supreme Council? Isn't that only for matters of international politics? Galbadia could easily be prosecuted by the Estharian government at a local level-"

"Yeah," replied Xu. "But this situation definitely qualifies as international. Trabia Garden's involved by default, and the destruction to the Tromedian IGCS tower alone totals in the millions of Gil. Arya's says she's got info that the Galbadian Government's money was shoved in this thing since the beginning, as well as some sub-levels of the Estharian Government. We've also got a great chance that there's a couple of bugs here in Balamb Garden as well, hiding Laguna's attempts to audit his own military budget. This thing is tangled up all over the place. We'd be stupid if we didn't take it to the international level, Squall. The only way we're going to keep Garden's license operable, is if we drag those bastards through the dirt first."

"How-" began Squall, but Xu was already on a roll, a furious look in her eyes.

"Those Galbadian piranhas are going to be on us like flies on shit as soon as the crisis teams clear, and then we've got problems. Sirri was already foaming at the mouth to get Garden's legal and funding status cut, and now he's going to have more than enough ammo to push it."

"Have we got inside pulling power? The Supreme Council will have to have a hearing, and we're going to need some testimony."

Xu sighed. "I've got all our best politicians on it. Or shall I say, all our remaining politicians on it."

"We've got Esthar, easy. And we had Doughtson from Trabia, didn't we?"

"Yeah. We _had_ Doughtson. Doughtson's now as shaky as a cat in a rocking chair factory, and he's turned into a skittish piece of shit since Trabia's funding went on the line." Xu sighed. "Our remaining dirty politicians are all lined up, but it's not enough to overturn the Supreme Council by a longshot."

Squall sighed, running his good hand over his face. "I can't deal with this now."

"You **have** to deal with this now. We need a Headmaster pro-temp, and Edea's in no shape whatsoever." Xu's gaze was hard and unrelenting, her dark, determined eyes a distinct contrast from Cid's. But the same will was there. The same iron. Squall knew that she wouldn't leave his room without an answer.

"You take it." Replied Squall. "The Garden Council's going to eat me alive for honoring the Estharian contract, anyway. Start assembling our politicians, and see what we've got on Galbadia. Is Odine talking?"

"Like a damned parakeet. Mostly about lawsuits against Almasy, and, of course, us-"

Squall sighed. "Can't count on Odine then. No one will take him seriously."

Xu studied the ceiling. "Yeah. We're neck-deep up shit creek without a _boat_, Squall, much less oars."

Squall just shook his head, running his good hand over his face. "How's Quistis?"

Xu's lips tightened. "I don't know."

Squall looked up. "Take me to her."

_Take me to the last glimmer of light in this shitty place._

……………………………………..

…

…

…

**Wake up.**

_Light, bright and stinging in her eyes. Roar of machinery, and air on her face. Sharp metallic taste on her tongue; warm, flowing salt. Blood. Her arms were hurting. Cold blurring in her eyes. Rain? She shuddered. _

**The pain. Make the pain stop. Make the rain stop. Pain, rain, go away- **

**Singsong nonsense.**

**Stop it.**

There were hands on her, shouting above her. Cold waves shot through her, pure waves of nausea, and then heat, unbearable heat dragging her up from the darkness into the bright shock of the grey sky above her.

**No…Stop….let me back down…let me down…**

_Arms underneath her.__ His arms. His eyes, stricken, hair stuck to his forehead in the rain. Dark, fading….Green eyes. Green like the sea on a summer day. She tried to hold that green, but it was slipping away, slipping like the rain down her cheeks._

_His voice, deep and rolling, like a thunderclap. "….going home. Take you home."_

**Home…yes. I want to go home. Let's go home together…we'll go to the ocean…and we'll dream by the sea…**

**Go to the ocean….dream by the sea…a song? An old song, coming back?**

She was slipping down. She reached for the song, grasped at the melody-

_and…__nothing. The warmth of his arms was fading, and the cold was rising up…up…up…._

_The ocean._

**Yes. I remember the ocean.**

_She touched her toe to wave, and found it cool, a numbing, soothing cold that tremored up her leg in familiar ripples. _

_"Quistis…"_

_The voices were warm and familiar, the water's crash like a heartbeat._

**The ocean. The ocean is calling me. I want to go…back to the ocean. **

_Though the field, then- the ocean lay beyond the flower field. The flowers passed like a fragrant whisper, and then, she was there, at the water's edge._

Slowly, she waded into the cold water- the beautiful water that felt like everything and nothing at all.

……………………………………………..

…

…

…

"Damnit, Selphie, quit coddlin' me. I'll be fine."

"But _Irvy_, you need to eat all your food, otherwise you'll never get your strength up!"

"This ain't food, Selph. This's colored cardboard."

"Hey everyone! I've got some food from the restaurant down the street!" All three jumped at the sound of the loud interruption. Arya stood in the hospital room door, holding up a bag already saturated in grease and smiling.

Zell winced. "'rya, honey, can you keep your voice down please?"

Arya cringed. "Whoops, sorry," she whispered, walking further into the room and pulling up a folding chair. Her hearing, although slowly improving, still hadn't recovered completely, and she was still working on re-wiring her hearing aids to serve as a dual-function headset/radio com.

"_Food_, finally, 'm starvin'." Said Irvine, sitting up gingerly and reaching towards the bag, only to have his hand slapped away.

"Absolutely not, Irvy! Remember what the doctor said!" chided Selphie. "Here, have another spoonful of potatoes-"

Irvine grimaced. "'Think I'm begginin' to feel tired…"

"How about some of the chicken a la-"

"Realllll tired…."

Arya's expression turned somber suddenly as she glanced behind her. "How's Cid?"

She instantly regretted asking. It was as if all the forced sunshine in the room had been snuffed out in one brief moment.

Their happiness was as much of an effort as anything else these days, strained under the burden of the dead and dying. It was a noble but failing façade, their smiles fading as soon as they looked to the beds around them. Galbadia was a mess, and relatives were turning out in the thousands to claim their dead. Balamb's soldiers had been depleted by roughly half in both the fall and the ensuing battle. Everyone had lost someone in the battle, and now, with the ensuing court orders, it seemed as if they would lose their home as well.

Selphie set Irvine's spoon down, looking sadly across to Arya. "Worse."

Arya looked down at her lap. "…And Quistis?"

Irvine's normally bright green eyes were dulled in a somber, lackluster sheen, worn down with painkillers. "The same."

Zell turned to the window, eyes narrowed. "Why bother askin', Arya? Did ya really think anything would be any different?"

"Well, I…I'd hoped…that-"

Zell's jaw twitched. "Yeah, well, what's hope getting us these days?"

Arya looked as if she'd been stung. She looked down at the floor, the bag still clutched tightly in her hand.

Selphie's eyes flashed as she turned in her chair. "Well, what good is your moping doing, Zell? At least we're trying to-"

"Trying to _what_, Selphie?" asked Irvine quietly. "Trying to pretend that Cid's going to be all right? That Quistis is going to wake up? Maybe it's time we started accepting-"

Selphie stood up. "Accepting what? That Garden's over? That Cid's dead and Quisty's lost? Well, I won't do it, Irvine. I didn't give up in Esthar and I'm sure as hell not giving up now!"

"Are you sayin' that **I** gave up on-" started Irvine hotly, but Selphie didn't pay any attention to him. Her eyes were lit with that same steel, stubborn fury that had lit her eyes on the battlefield days ago…a lifetime ago.

"Cid would be ashamed of all of us, sitting around and feeling sorry for ourselves. Quisty didn't give her life in Esthar so that we could fall apart at her bedside!"

It had been said. It had been acknowledged, finally, the thing they had been tiptoeing around since Kadowaki began to speak of things like 'irreversible coma' and 'high probability of extensive brain damage'.

A stunned silence permeated the small space, before Selphie clapped a hand to her mouth, and ran quickly from the room. Zell silently eased himself out after her, going the opposite way down the hall, his shoulders hunched over his crutches.

Arya met Irvine's gaze, her own helpless and sad, before dropping the bag in the garbage and heading silently out the door, hugging her arms around herself.

Irvine stared listlessly out the window, the pain in his chest entirely separate from the staples that strung down his body.

_And that's what we're doing. We're falling apart. _

……………………………………………………..

…

…

…

Damned Chocobos were everywhere. Neon greens, hot pinks….the things were ripping up the white grass everywhere. He would need to get some lawn darts to take care of the problem, and it would take him hours upon hours to get rid of them all.

The sky was so dizzy…he wished he could stop it from swirling…it was making him nauseous. He was going to have to replant everything…and the dancing squirrels would have to be taken care of too, those little bastards…

**Seifer**.

FlasH.

_His mother was kneeling in the garden, lost in a sea of plums and bright oranges. She looked like a fading white sunset. Her gardening gloves were filled with potting soil. She was smiling at him._

**Hey, Seifer. Hey, little man. Come here.**

FlaSH.

_She was leaning against the shields, her hair flying back like a golden swath, yelling orders for the retreat. The gun kicked back to fire even as the loud explosion of the tank barreled forth in a ball of fire, consuming everything in a bright sunburst of color and schrapnel-_

_His chest was tightening, tightening, like the trigger on a gun, and it was going to explode-_

**The field. Go to the field.**

**FLAsH****. **

_….Running through the grass, the stalks whipping at his legs, sunlight hot on his face. Laughter was bubbling ahead of him, bubbling up into the sunlight, and he was stretching forward, reaching his hand out to the sunlight, the swath of silk that ribboned in front of him-_

**Almost**_-_

Seifer.

_He reached farther. _

**Almost**_-_

"Wake up."

He cracked open an eye, and a sea of white linen swam before him, blurred and hazy. Pain flashed across his forehead, jagged down his spine and pooling in his stomach, where it swam like an uneasy fish. He squirmed, moaning as he turned on his side.

_Dead.__ Am I dead?_

Light at the window…burning light. He closed his eye and buried his face back into a tangle of soft white beneath him.

**Where the hell am I?**

_Heaven?_

**Ha ha. Nice try.**

_The hotel room, surrounded in beer bottles and the lingering, rotting stench of moldy bread and peeling paint-_

**No. That time is gone.**

**…unless it was all a dream…**

He took a deep, shuddering breath through his nostrils, and inhaled the scent of antiseptic and old blankets. The scent of stale saltine crackers and antiseptic. Vomit. Mothballs. Not the hotel.

The pain in his spine was steady and stiff, as if someone had strung an angry length of barbed wire down his back.

**What the hell happened? **

**Think, stupid. Remember.**

Light, light, burning light in his body, stretching outward, snaking through his hands like a hundred stalled Thundaga spells, and Adel's dark, gurgling scream filling the dark room-

_Darkness_.

An ugly face over him, a piece of thread between his teeth. Fire on his back, a roaring pain that held his entire body in a vice.

Screaming. Praying to die. Someone holding a cup to his lips, easing something terrible, something thick and bitter down his throat. A knee in his spine, and a new burning in his back. His hands were tied down to brass posts, the ropes biting into his wrists. Cold fire.

**Cold**…

A voice.

_Firia__ Equis. _

_The mark of your redemption._

Seifer grimaced as he sat up. His mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. His back bit into him like a ravenous dog, tearing across his shoulders before subsiding into a dull ache. The light from the window was blinding.

**I'm…alive?**

**How long have I been out? Where the hell am I? **

**….is this hell?**

"About time you got up, you lazy oaf."

The blurred shape solidified into a hazy, familiar form.

**Chu**.

Chu was standing in the doorway, wearing a ridiculously frilly apron and holding a mixing bowl and whisk.

_The fuck?__ Am I hallucinating?_

"Good you're up!" Chu promptly waved the wisk at him. "Many things to do."

"Great…" muttered Seifer, staring at the ceiling. "I **am** in hell."

"Trabia." corrected Chu calmly, studying him.

Seifer rolled on his side, wincing as a wave of nausea shot through him. "…what's…the difference…"

"I see you have not lost cynicism, thick-skulled cur. Just as well. Going to need it." With that, Chu turned and walked back into the kitchen, where a flurry of swearing and banging ensued. Some things hadn't changed.

His entire body felt numb and disconnected, a jumble of foreign wires and impulses all misconnected.

Seifer blinked at the lamp, whose light was like a swimming liquid in front of his eyes. "How long…have I been out?"

Chu glanced out the window, tut-tutting the weather before allowing the curtain to fall back into place. "Two weeks, give or take. In and out."

"Two weeks?! But…" The room tilted, and Seifer lay back down, breathing heavily and trying to get his stomach to stop its lurching. Questions swimming in his head.

_How did you find me? Where….how did…how the hell did I get here?_

"What about…everyone else…"

_Where the hell am I? What happened to me? What the hell happened to…everyone else?_

Chu wiped another bowl before tossing it randomly into a cabinet, where it landed with a splintering crash. "Galbadia Garden is now in thousand or so pieces over Trabian horizon. Dr. Odine is in high security Trabian prison, answering questions, I think. You recover from nasty sorceress bite, yourself. Many cuts and burns- many stitches..."

"What the hell are you doing?" shouted Seifer, holding his head, as Odine threw a plate into a closet. The room was spinning, the flat, wooden ceilings twisting and bending…

"Dishes." Said Chu, simply, throwing a tea cup against the wall. The man was nuts. It was a small wonder that Chu's restaurant had any dishes at all.

Seifer shut his eyes. "What the hell…is this place?" He looked around at the small, wooden enclosure, the foreign furniture, the frost-covered windows. "How…how did you find me?"

"You are in a cabin in Trabia whose owner too dead to care who borrow his property." Chu leaned over to examine a tea kettle before opening the door and throwing it out into the snow. "_How_ I find you…not important now."

Seifer tried to sit up, but found the action to be more trouble than he could handle. He slumped back down, staring at the ceiling and trying to will it to stop moving.

"Slow, stupid, or you jar something else loose besides that brain of yours."

He tried to roll his shoulder, and nearly yelled with pain. His once quicksilver sword arm moved like it was filled with cement. He tried to make a fist, but the fingers barely flexed.

"What the fuck happened to me?"

"A Sorceress happened to you. You not remember?" Shouted Chu from the kitchen. "You got head injury, too?"

Seifer swore at Chu and reached back to touch the itch in his back.

"Don't touch that, idiot. You bother stitches."

"Stitches?"

Stitches. Chu holding a cup to his lips, an aching, burning in his back, as if someone with steel fingers was ripping it apart…

"Adel tore up your back from ass to neck, boy. You can't remember?"

"I don't…" He tried hard to recall something, but the images eluded him. "I don't remember anything..."

"Amnesia, or naturally stupid?"

"Hyne, what the fuck did I do to deserve **you**?" he shouted back, his head spinning from yelling.

"Save your life…ungrateful dog…." More muttering from the kitchen, followed by a loud crash. Cursing now.

Seifer looked down at his half-curled fingers with disgust.

**I'm…I'm a fucking cripple. Useless…**

The sword in his hand, burning, and Adel's laughter and the Garden exploding and Odine and _BrekandBalambGardendown,down,Fujindown,Quistisandhisbloodyjacketcarryingherback-_

It was then that the magnitude of what had happened hit him full force, like a semi to the chest.

Adel….Squall and the others….Fujin, dead beneath the cold stone, Rajin, his face screwed up in anger…Galbadia Garden…Quistis.

**Quistis**.

**She's….gone. They're all gone.**

Suddenly, numbness seemed to spread over his entire body, accompanied by a nearly unbearable burning in his eyes, and he lay his head back onto the pillow, turning towards the wall and wishing Chu had left him in that empty, smoking shell to die.

……………………………………………

…

…

…

She slept like an angel.

Granted, an angel that had fallen from heaven, battered and bruised, but an angel nonetheless. In the past few days, the bruises began to flush against her skin in golds and purples, and the swelling in her arms had ceased. The stitches remained, sewing her together like a puzzle. Every day, Kadowaki traced the stitch linings with a diluted Cure application, so that when she awoke, there would be minimal scar tissue.

**When she awoke.**

They were all unwilling to give her up yet.

"Still watching over her?" The quiet voice ribboned out from the soft shadow in the doorway. Squall looked up, and a small measure of comfort flooded through him. Her presence had that effect, sometimes, when she wanted it to.

He nodded, watching Rinoa's small, sleek form slip quietly into the room. She sat by his side, and reached for his hand even as she reached for Quistis'. Rinoa's dark eyes were sad as they gazed at their friend.

"I always admired Quistis. I suppose I envied her, too, in a way. She always seemed so strong…not afraid of anything."

Squall turned away. "If she was so strong, then why is she here, like this?"

A sad smile tugged at the corners of Rinoa's mouth. "Because…I think she believed more in our future than in hers."

"What do you mean?" asked Squall, snapping his head around to look at her.

"Oh, I don't know. It's just a feeling I got, watching her."

He never really understood her intuition, and had the distinct feeling that he never would. Rinoa always saw something in people, including himself, that those people never acknowledged even to themselves.

"She abandoned us," he murmured bitterly.

"Did she?" Rinoa sighed, and gently sat Quistis' hand back in her lap. "With Quistis….she never felt that she had anyone to come back to. That she was in some way left alone…left behind. I don't think she expected to be missed."

Squall's brow furrowed.

"Promise me you'll never do that. Never leave…"

**Never leave me.**

Rinoa smiled sadly, squeezing his hand. "Oh, Squall. I promise."

They had become experts at reading in each other only how they wanted to. It was the only way a fairy tale romance could survive- on bliss and ignorance.

They both settled into silence after awhile, watching the rise and fall of Quistis' heart monitor. After awhile, Squall had fallen asleep and only Rinoa was left to guard the stillness. She leaned over Quistis's bedside, and smoothed a lock of hair behind her head. The lights shone deep into her warm brown eyes, and for a moment, caught a bit of the bottomless darkness that lurked beneath, wavering, waiting.

"Omnes una magna nox…my sister."

………………………………………

…

…

_It was strange here, but familiar; a beach and an ocean and sunlight that stung her eyes. There was no noise, only the steady throb of the shore. She wondered where the others were, if in fact there were others here. She tried not to think too much. She could feel her mind on the edge of sanity, and yet, only inches from complete calm…she found that she could choose what to feel here, and she chose indifference._

_It was a time with no place or name…a collection of streets and words and faces all spun together like mental cotton candy. The thoughts there were tangled and sticky, but certainly not sweet. She was caught in it, but the knowledge did not disturb her. But then, nothing really bothered her anymore._

_Nothing touched her here but the memories._

_She felt as if she had run a very long way, and was just now coming home. There was pain, but she felt it only on the edge of her consciousness- almost like an afterthought._

_In the haze between life and death, she remembered her mother, the woman with long blonde hair, and eyes like the ocean. She was beautiful, but she smelled of cheap lotion and she always looked exotic- too much mascara. She did not smell like a mother, and her touch was always half-impatient, but she had love in her voice, even if it was strained. _

_Going places, got to get there, all right? You've got to keep up, okay?_

_The memory was hard to reach, and Quistis had to strain to get at it. It was like stretching to reach an object on a high shelf in her memory closet. _

**_My mother. I want to remember my mother._**

_Cold in the bathroom….long blonde hair…..the money, the sea money…Sal crying and pressing the diner napkin into her hands….._

_Her mother. There she was. A blue-eyed, smiling woman with long blonde hair, exotic in the cheap city lights._

_She was cut the crusts off the bread, and braided her hair when she had the time. She was funny and prone to silliness, and she knew how to make her little girl smile. Her mother knew about the ocean and numbers and what stars were made of. She was a bright, wasted star in the tawdry neon city. Quistis had no memories of her father, but remembered only that he had been sent to a place called War and that War had not sent him back._

_Even as a very young child, she knew her mother was intelligent, and that it had passed to her. The knowledge was bright and guileless like polished copper pride- it was the one area in which Quistis herself had ever felt remotely adequate. _

_The flat was always cold, and the window was usually open, even in the winter. Sal, the roommate, was always smoking, a tall dark-haired woman that was half interesting but mostly scary. Her silhouette was usually draped across the windowpane, a cigarette in her thin fingers as she stared down at the city streets. _

_And the bathroom. The bathroom with the single bare bulb and the dripping faucet. Her mother would shut her in the bathroom with the record player when the men came over. Her mother would set her in the bathtub with the small machine and a soft blanket, and set the needle before she turned up the volume. The bathroom smelled like rubber and a bitter sweat smell. She didn't like it in the bathroom. _

_Her mother, spreading a blanket in the tub._

_"You're a good girl, aren't you? Just sit here and play the record three times, okay? That's five songs each time. How many songs is that altogether, huh? No, you gotta count, pretty girl. Let's pull out both our hands. One, two, three, four, five. You gotta count my hand three times. Keep going. Fifteen? That's it, that's my smart girl. Now you go in there an' lock the door, okay? Don't open it till I tell you. Gimme a kiss. Good girl."_

_It wasn't even a good record. The songs didn't make any sense to her, a bunch of jazz songs and slow tunes with bad piano solos and even cheaper lyrics. But after awhile, the sound grew familiar, soothing. It drowned out the strange sounds in the next room- the strange men's voices and her mother's voice, even stranger. The headboard knocked against the bathroom wall, throwing off the beat of the music. But she couldn't really hear anything above the scratch of the record. If she listened carefully, she could still hear the song playing in her mind._

_Pretty baby, with eyes like the moon_

_We're gonna be together soon_

_The time is gonna be sweet, _

_gonna__ be sweet of course_

_Gonna pick you up on my big white horse_

_Peach soft skin and a mouth like honeydew_

_Gonna sweep you off your feet_

_…Till the world fades out to me and you_

_We'll go to the ocean_

_We'll dream by the sea_

_No wars and no pain_

_Just you and just me_

_Gonna pick you up and take you far away_

_We'll ride up to the moon_

_Gonna ride up to forever someday…_

_Someday…._

_And after three record lengths, her mother would come and get her, her hair all messed and her mascara running. Sometimes there would be blood on her face, or a bruise that would flush out later. Her mother always smelled like them, damp and musky like wet dogs rolling around in the heat. She hated the smell. Her mother knew this. She hated it too._

_"Oh I know you don't like it in the bathroom, honey, me neither, me neither. Don't cry honey, mommy isn't hurt, it's all okay. We'll go make peanut butter sandwiches and sit on the bed with the secret jar, okay? I've got some more to put in it. It's all right, honey. Gonna be all right...you'll see."_

_It was perhaps fortunate that an adult Quistis did not carry with her the image of her real mother, and that Quistis lacked enough age and perspective to put into context her mother's life when she was alive. In an old shoebox under the mouse-infested cot, there were a few faded photographs of a handsome young boy with a pretty smile and a dusty perfume spritzer. Occasionally she and her mother would remove these from the box and examine them like hidden treasures, repeating words like 'Daddy', which carried absolutely no weight in Quistis' young mind at all._

_The perfume spritzer was perhaps the saddest item in Serra Trepe's collection-dusty proof that the Trepes had not always been slum fodder. Serra's occupation was a trade born out of a terrible desperation, of a frantic young mother with a squalling, feverish child to feed and an achingly empty stomach, with no family to turn to and no skills to peddle but the ones genetics provided. _

_The Trepes were survivors. Her mother's blood did not carry the gallant and rash components that would have allowed her an easy, early death, a death with honor. No- there was a kind of base iron in her blood, that of the persistent if not the whimsical. _

_It was a metal that took a beating. Even if it didn't polish well in civil society, it could endure in the slums. And though Quistis, in her adult life, would have long forgotten her mother, it was her strength she drew from, even if it was her own unconscious desire to shine and succeed in spite of her once lackluster existence, which was perhaps a trait of her late father. If Serra Trepe could have seen her daughter now, the polished product of an elite military institution, it would not have surprised her. Serra was a dreamer, even if she lacked the steel resolve and the monetary resources to fashion her dreams into more solid stuff._

_After her mother dealt with the men, they'd go into the bedroom, and count out all the money and put it in the jar under the bed. The secret jar. Sometimes they would take out the money from the jar and spread it all over the bed and roll around in it and laugh, and her mother told stories._

"Someday, baby, we're gonna buy ourselves a house on the ocean and have a dog an' all that fairy tale stuff. You'll see. Big mansion with cut glass windows and big soft rugs. And I'll get you the prettiest dresses, and you can just spin around on the sand with your skirt on and watch it twirl up in the wind. You're gonna be so pretty. Oh, it's going to be wonderful. I promise. In the meantime, we just have to play pretend. When things get too scary or too sad, we just close our eyes and pretend we're somewhere else, okay? Pretend you're at the beach with that big skirt twirling, honey. That's what I do when I'm sad. I think of you at the shore with that beautiful dress on. Someday, sunshine. You'll see. I promise."

_An adult Quistis could later roll words like 'someday' over in her mind and grimace as if she'd developed a bad taste in her mouth. There was no whimsical fluid in Quistis' backbone- an unconscious repulsion from her childhood. An adult Quistis carried hands calloused from hot burners and a mind sharpened by abuse and her own raw determination._

_The Quistis Trepe that survived did not dream much, and when she did, it hurt._

**_No…I don't want to remember what I became. I want to remember what I was. _**

Quistis shied away from the steel portion of her brain, picking through the cobwebs to the soft cotton of her childhood.

**_There. Remember my childhood. Remember….the money….the money sea. _**

_Quistis reached for the memory, which shimmered like a blue-green orb in her mind._

_….Sometimes when they spread out all the gill all over the mattress, Quistis could almost see the ocean in the sea of gold and green and blue, see the rolling waves and the skirt of her pretty dress, blowing in the wind. They rolled in it, laughing, and that was the only time she had ever heard her mother really laugh._

_It didn't last._

_One night, another man came over, a rich man that sparkled like gold and stunk of musk. Men were coming over all the time, but Quistis hated this one especially. He came over all the time, wanting money. Her mother was scared of this man. _

_"Serra! You open this Hyne-damned door right now, you stupid bitch!"_

**_No. I don't want to remember this._**

But she was sucked down, waist-deep in the memory, and she could not retreat.

_"Serra! SERRA!"_

_"Get in the bathroom, Quistis! Get in and lock the door!" Her mother quickly pushed her into the bathroom, and Quistis, stunned, locked the door and sat in the bathtub, setting the needle on the record all by herself._

_But something wasn't right. She could feel it squirming against her skin._

_Her mother was screaming, so loud, and the music didn't drown it out at all. Each syllable echoed through the wall, and Sal was screaming, too, and things were breaking everywhere. _

_And then, it got very, very quiet._

_Quistis crawled out of the tub and slowly, silently, pushed the door open a crack. The man her mother hated was standing in the kitchen, stuffing gil into his pockets. He was sweating hard, and his suit jacket was splattered with something dark._

_The man was yelling, then. "You see, bitch? This is what happens to whores who steal from me. You see? Let that be a lesson to all a' yose. You ain't cuttin' me in, I'll be cuttin' you up."_

_"Oh shit…she ain't movin, Anthony. She ain't movin'. You tol' me, if I told 'bout the money, you wouldn't hurt her! Aw Hyne, what'd you do, what'd you **DO**?" Sal's voice, near hysterical. "What'm I sposta do **now**? What'm I sposta DO?"_

_Man's voice again. "Clean it up. Ain't my problem. Where's that brat o' hers?"_

_Quistis instinctively backed away from the door, pressing against the doorframe and peering through the slice of light into the kitchen, where Sal was now pacing._

_A long pause. "She ain't here." _

_The one pure act of Sal's utterly self-absorbed, bottom-feeder life was to grant Quistis her own._

_"Well you git that little brat cleaned up. I wan 'er ready by next week. I got customers'll pay big bucks for a pretty little thing with clear skin like that now that Serra ain't here to protect her."_

_"But Anthony, she's just a kid-"_

_"So were you. So was her mother. I don't give a shit. Just get her ready."_

_Sal was pacing. "This ain't good. I told ya, Serra ain't movin' and the cops is gonna come, an-" _

_The sound of slapping was heard, and a chair tipped over. Quistis cringed away from the door._

_"Shut yer fucking mouth, whore. Call up Gris and Walden. Tell 'em to throw her behind Tony's. Plenty of garbage there. It ain't my problem."_

_"But-" _

_Another smacking sound. "Listen good, now. You turn on me, bitch, and I'll do you just like I did her. Remember that. Get the brat ready."_

_The door slammed._

_Ten record lengths and her mother still hadn't come and gotten her, and she tiptoed out and opened the bedroom door. There was a foot sticking out from behind the mattress, and the floor was sticky with dark, warm liquid. The Magic Jar was broken. The shards glittered in the moonlight, and there was gil scattered everywhere, soaked red. It didn't look like an ocean, or a pretty dress. _

_It didn't look like anything. _

_She sat down in the middle of the floor and picked up what was left of the wet money, and waited for her mother to wake up. _

_"Come on, mommy," she whispered, laying her hands on her mother's arm and shaking her, lightly. "We have to leave. We have to go to the ocean."_

_"Oh fuck kid, get up offa there." Sal's voice. Sal came and got her, and smoothed her hair back as she walked outside into the cold night and did the only good unselfish thing that she'd probably ever done in her life. The lights of the city eventually dimmed into nothingness, and she remembered riding, riding somewhere in a silver horse with big wheels and loud noises, wrapped in a blanket and her mother's blood drying her dress to her skin. And she was lonely, lonely in a way she didn't understand yet but would later, all too well. And suddenly they were in front of a big brick building, and the sun was coming up, and Sal was setting her on the steps, and muttering, scribbling on an old napkin and muttering to herself._

_"Hey, little girl, little mudpie, you gotsta sit here 'n these steps, kay? Kay? Good girl. You hold onto this napkin, kay? It's got some important stuff on it. Someone nice gonna come get you, 'cause yer momma can't take care o' you no more."_

_It was cold on the steps. "Where's Momma?"_

_Sal's hard eyes filled with tears. "Your mommy's in a place…uh, where people can't come back and visit." Sal quickly wiped her sleeve across her eyes and stood up. " Gotsta sit here, kay? Yose a smart little one, aintcha? You gonna do what Sal says?"_

_She could only nod. _

_Sat was shaking all over. "Good girl, good girl, now just sit there, just sit there and be quiet till the lady comes."_

_And she watched Sal walk down the street, hands jammed in her pockets, and after awhile, the memory simply blended into the cottage by the sea. The woman there was nice, and said to call her Matron, and there were other children there, too. _

_She would take care of them. _

_The napkin read: Quistis Trepe. _

_The only legacy her mother left her was a name._

_The ocean at the orphanage was so pretty. She wished her mother could see. Her mother the desperate whore, who only wanted her daughter to wear pretty dresses and dance by the ocean. _

_Time went by and her mother eventually slipped from her thoughts, rocked away by the ocean tide and the laughter of the other children. But she still thought of her, occasionally, thought of her mother's eyes and ocean and how her mother would never see it. Childhood amnesia would later wipe her mother from her mind, but for those few months, she walked to the ocean, and twirled in circles, thinking that somewhere, her mother could see._

_"But she can see you now."_

_Quistis frowned at the voice. It seemed far away, like another layer of a dream._

_The pain twisted in strange ways, morphing into subtle ghosts that played beneath the skin of her mind. She turned, and saw a man standing behind her, hands in his pockets and a wide smile on his face._

_"Hello, Quistis."_

_The voice was familiar, comforting. She did not need to turn around._

_She smiled. "Hello, Cid."_

_………………………………………………….._

_  
_

Days passed with no real meaning or direction for Seifer. Chu came and went without many words, but then, Chu had never been a man of words anyway. More a man of stick swinging and plate throwing, which he did on occasion in the hut. Mostly, Seifer stared out at the snow and tried to sit up without vomiting.

The time was tedious, to say the least.

"Time for you to get off lazy ass."

Chu walked towards him, holding a large white rag that was tied securely at the top like a vagrant's pouch. "For you." He dropped it into Seifer's lap, where it landed with a heavy clang.

"Damnit!" wheezed Seifer. "Hyne, old man, do you have any frickin' balls of your own?"

"Open." Commanded Chu, and stepped back with his arms folded, watching intently.

Rolling his eyes, Seifer set the sack down on the counter, and opened up the cloth, smoothing it out against the chipped oak wood table.

Hundreds of glittering pieces met his gaze, along with the remains of a custom revolver base whose handle was terribly charred.

"My sword…" Seifer trailed off.

The shards stared up at him.

_His arm on fire, sweeping the long arc of light across Adel's throat…._

"Hyperion." Said Chu, solemnly.

"How…." Seifer's jaded green eyes stared back at him from the sea of shards.

"You forget? That sword broke a sorceress's heart."

_Adel's eyes, glittering with rage. Her metallic arms around him, choking the breath out of him, ripping at his flesh… screams tearing through his ears and he wrenched his arm away, his arm covered in a cold but familiar flame, and he drove it into her chest…_

"Your arm." Chu pointed. "Magic is a dangerous thing. It does not work for free."

This Seifer knew all too well.

_Quistis, split open in the rain, blood pouring from her wrist_s…

Chu was still talking, shaking him out of his reverie. "For Firia Equis…a very high price."

_Firia__ Equis. The mark of your redemption._

"Firia Equis. You mean fire cross, don't you?"

Chu shook his head. "You studied fire cross at the academy, ne? Not easy magic to learn."

"No."

_Hell_ no. Seifer remembered countless hours spent in the Training Center lighting everything from Grats to himself on fire trying to learn the nearly impossible combination of summoning the fire magic and junctioning it to the metal. Controlling the flame's junction to the weapon was the hardest. It required intense concentration. If he broke it for any reason, the fire would happily embed itself in his skin, punishing him for his lack of focus. Fire magic was fickle magic. Extremely unpredictable. Extremely destructive. It was why he pushed himself to learn it in the first place.

Chu nodded. "Spells like that require mastery. You botch it for many years- glorified sword trick. Lack sufficient conduction. What you cast…never Fire Cross."

Seifer narrowed his eyes. Botched it? Pff. "That 'sword trick' killed a GF, old man."

"Lucky shot." He muttered, before turning back to the fire.

Seifer turned. "What?"

"Nothing. Firia Equis is skill requires years of mastery. Some Hynian monks do not master it in lifetime. Require unbreakable will, clear emotion to feed clear fire."

"Clear emotion?" Seifer rolled his eyes. "When that bitch had ahold of me, I wasn't exactly thinking about rainbows and puppies, old man."

Chu responded by whapping him upside the head. "Strong emotion is all that is required. It is will that must be present." Chu chuckled. "With kind of power you generated, I surprised that firia cripple only your arm."

"Firia? What _firia_?"

Chu chuckled. "Soulfire, of course. What, boy, you think you junctioning flame out of thin air? Idiot."

Seifer screwed up his face and mouthed Chu's words under his breath, pulling his lead arm up onto the table with a loud _thunk_. "When the hell does the snow melt?"

"Three months."

"WHAT?"

Chu didn't miss a beat. "Much work to do. You must regain strength, reforge blade…"

Seifer's exasperation had reached an all time high. "Using what, old man? Duct tape?"

Looking at Hyperion was a disheartening activity. The sword was in a million pieces, and the revolver portion was all but blasted to hell…even if he had a million vials of grease and a thousand replacement parts, he'd never get the blade's balance back.

Chu gave Seifer a look reserved for the very young and the very stupid. "The blade smith this mountain is best sword-crafter in entire world. You been living under rock?"

_No,_ Seifer wanted to retort. _I've been living in this hellhole with you._

Instead, he turned around. "And just where is he on this snow-infested hell?"

"Three days journey up mountain," replied Chu nonchalantly, before going back into the hole in the wall that was apparently supposed to be a 'kitchen' and cooking something Seifer guessed was supposed to resemble 'dinner.'

"Three days…three months…" Seifer let his head fall next to his arm on the table top with a pronounced thunk.

**_……………………………………………………………_**

**_…_**

**_…_**

**_… _**

"Cid…"

The Cid before her was dressed in a pair of slacks whose cuffs had been rolled up mid-calf, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He was home from work, tie loose around his neck.

But that wasn't right. Cid was lying in the hospital bed, face pale and jaunt. His brown hair had been shaved off completely, the bald glare of his skull interrupted only by a white bandage taped across his head, the gauze soaked with blood. His glasses were off, hands limp against the hospital sheets-

The pain in her arms was returning, burning up her veins into her heart…

No. NO. Cid in his vest and dark slacks, with the cuffs rolled up. Cid, barefoot, his blue eyes twinkling and his smile as open as sunlight-

It always was his happiest time, when he could come home and play in the water and smoke his pipe, sitting in the swing and letting the girls push him back and forth, his loafers dragging in the sand.

She smiled at him as the pain in her arms receded. It was good to have company in this place…wherever this place was…

It was just a beach, nothing but the sand, the saltwater, and the sky around her. She was happy to be here.

"Hey, how about a walk, sunshine?" he asked, holding out his arm.

She took it, and they walked down the beach, feet bare and sinking into the cool sands as the water lapped at their toes. Strange that she should feel things here- the kiss of the waves, the salt breeze, but maybe not so strange. The mind believed what it wanted to, she supposed.

The end of the beach was bright with sunlight, echoing off the sands and making sight beyond the water impossible.

"Remember when you used to sit out by the sea? I thought it would take an act of Hyne to get you back inside some nights, you loved that water so much."

She shook her head, remembering as she looked out at the water. "I remember." She turned to him, the wind warm against her back. "I hope we weren't too much trouble for you, back then."

Cid just shook his head, pushing his glasses up his plump nose with his free hand. "You kids were the best thing that ever happened to us. Don't ever think differently." They stopped, and he held her out at arm's length. "Look at you! All grown up. I guess you're not my firefly anymore, are you?"

Firefly. She reached for the memory.

Chasing fireflies in the field. She remembered his sloppy attempt to make peanut butter and bananna sandwiches with the crusts cut off. They ate them on a picnic blanket in the yard. She remembered story times, curled up against his small paunch of a belly, the scent of aftershave and pipe tobacco a warm scent tucked in the collar of all of his shirts. She remembered him in his office, shirt just a little wrinkled, his kind blue eyes and his warm smile…She remembered loving him for his guileless leadership even as she knew that it could never be enough, forgiving his failures as a man for the good qualities he possessed as her caretaker.

I'll always be your firefly, she thought. You were the only…the only real father I ever had.

Although she didn't say the words out loud, his eyes lit up. She imagined that all things could be heard here…even thoughts.

Thoughts were whispers that danced across her mind, there and gone….teasing echoes of other times that raced up and down the beach.

"Where are we, Cid? Am I imagining all this?"

He smiled.

Do you really want to know, Quistis?

His lips did not move.

"No, I guess not," she said, letting go of his arm.

Cid turned around, folding his hands behind him as he gazed out at the water. "You have to go back."

This is not your time.

She shook her head. "No." She wanted to go into the ocean. She could hear the voices, the whispers along the white-capped waves, stronger now. Welcoming her. Her mother's voice…

…Look at my girl. All grown up. So proud of you. Come here. Let me see that skirt twirl…..

"Mom." Quistis took another step, her foot dipping into the water's cool fringe.

But Cid didn't hear her. "All you kids…all grown up…so young to inherit a legacy…but I have faith. I'm so proud. You tell the others. Tell them, how proud all my children have made me."

"Tell them when you wake up."

And yet, she knew he wasn't coming back, either. His voice was in the water already….his voice was pushing her back…

No. I want to go in the water.

He touched her cheek, thumbs brushing at the tears that gathered there. "Sunshine. I have to go." He looked behind him. "Yes…have to go now. Can't you hear it calling me?" He dropped her hand, and started into the water, the dark waves curling around his trousers.

"Where are you going!" she called, wading in after him, chasing him into the cold water. "You can't go!"

The water was cold…so cold…it drove through her veins like sharp shards of ice. "Cid!"

Darkness in the water, darkness looming up like a shadow beneath the waves, and she wanted to surrender to it…

He ignored her, and she trailed after him, getting colder and colder. Numbing…

It was so cold here…she just wanted to lay down in the water, and go to sleep, dream all the dreams that lay frozen beneath the waves…

She tried to walk forward, but it was like walking into a wall. She could see beyond: the waves, the sky, but she could not go further. Suddenly Cid was in front of her, his eyes boring into hers. "No!" he said, shaking her. "You have to go back, Quistis."

"They don't need me." She said quietly. "It….hurts, there."

_Everything hurts there._

_…I don't want to go back. There's nothing for me there._

The pain in her arms was intensifying…the pain in her heart was nearly unbearable. It felt almost ready explode.

The ocean, the waves dancing like a heartbeat…

The ocean….she'd seen it before, and yet, she knew for certain that she had never been here in her life.

It was unsettling. It was a subtle purgatory that beat unsteady in her brain. Her pain swelled and ebbed here, arms splitting and closing. Here was Between. It was eternity in an hour….impossible, condensed peace.

But how had she gotten here? Esthar….the tank….then nothing. Irvine, Selphie. Selphie crying. Pain. So much pain. Seifer, his arms around her, his voice in her ears, hands on her chest, yelling, telling her not to die. Telling her that they were going home….no. That was gone now. That was past. It was a dream.

_Like this dream. _

_Like this ocean._

_I'm sleeping. _

_I'm_….**dying…**

The knowledge did not particularly phase her.

She walked towards the water, and found the pain in her arms fading.

Images flashed before her on the waves, faces and voices and laughter. She missed them. She missed him. And yet, it didn't hurt here. It was only the memory of pain, faint and fading.

"Quistis."

She turned.

"You can't come yet."

"No. They're waiting for me." She wanted to go down into the dark ocean, where her mother was…"I can hear them." Mother was in the waves, and somewhere, father-

_I want to go in the water. I want to forget._

She dipped her hand into a small, lapping wave, and a cold rush traveled up her arm, numbing the pain.

"There are other people waiting for you, Quistis." Came the quiet reply. "Outside of time."

**I am sorry. There is no place for you here.**

A group of soldiers wearing familiar faces. They were all calling to her, their voices low murmurs across space and time. Squall, Selphie, Irvine….all of them. They were….sad. Their voices were in her ears, low and pleasant. Hands on her hands, touches and sounds that faded in and out.

_It's not real._

She lowered her hand and turned away. The voices disappeared.

She turned back to look at Cid, who was now only a shadow on the waves. "It's not real. They don't need me."

"They do, Quistis." Replied the Cid shadow. "They will."

It was like Time Compression. Damned time compression, with memories swimming everywhere but none of them taking hold on her. All far away.

"Blood pressure's low."

Voices, unfamiliar, from far away.

"No. I don't understand."

"Go back, Quistis."

She turned on him, rage lighting her mind in bright, crimson waves of emotion. "Damn you! How…how dare you come here, telling me what to do! I've always done what you've asked of me! Always! And now…you're asking me to go back?"

The ocean was spinning, the sand was spinning….the sky was turning black, clouds rolling in from every direction…

"You don't have to go back to that life! Spend every night alone and counting the seconds till morning…dreaming of someone to fill the space beside you and yet fearing it, fearing it because the people that raised you were crippled on the inside so badly that they crippled you, too! Wanting, just once, to have something handed to you, the way everyone else seemed to have it handed to them!" She backed up. "But I had to reach! I always had to reach out, and there was always nothing! There was no one reaching back for me. Just once, I wanted to have something given to me, the way Rinoa had Squall. The way everyone…had each other." A storm was brewing over the water, rumbling as it neared. "I lived and I died for Garden! Isn't that enough? What more can you ask of me?"

"Pulse accelerated…decorate posturing…"

Pain flashed across her arm, and she drew back from the voice.

"Quistis." Cid's eyes were sad. He reached out, and with the pad of his thumb, he smoothed it across her cheek. "Go back."

"Get the doctor…"

She shook her head.

_No. No. You can't ask this of me. I'm tired. I'm tired and all I want to do is sleep._

She took another step into the waves, but was quickly forced back.

"Pulse fading…someone get the shock paddles-get that cart out of the way, damnit!"

His blue eyes were filled with tears, and he looked older than he had in his life. "Please, Quistis. Protect the Garden. Protect them..." He said, quietly, and with such desperation she stopped, tears coursing down her cheeks, grief already rising like a burning knife in her stomach.

He turned his head. " I have to go."

"We're losing…….charge at 300…."

"You're just giving up!" she shouted, arms splashing into the icy water in her rage as she pummeled fists into the water. "You're giving up and leaving me!"

"Charge at 360…"

He held her steady, smiling his gentle smile. "When our time comes…we have to go." He paused, glancing up at the sky. "You go on, firefly. I'll be close."

His hands were slipping from hers, the waves rising to take him from her, and she closed her eyes, telling him without words that she loved him for all that he had been to her- father, mentor, friend-

"I'll be close…"The warmth of his grip was gone, but she felt his last thoughts trickle down in the hollow of her soul newly opened from the pain of losing him… "Always be close…."

They were of Edea…of a pretty new bride wearing white and holding up her bouquet of lilacs, the small fragrant flowers against her pale skin, the scent of her neck and the soft texture of her skin, the sound of her voice-

And the children, all of the children, Ellone and Seifer and Squall, Selphie and Irvine, Zell and her, and they were laughing in the waves, and Edea was there too, smiling, her dark eyes holding the promise of the present and the future-

And Garden, Garden in the sunlight, and the sound of footsteps, and voices, and-

Edea, a young woman, smiling as she turned-

And then…he was gone. His fingers slipped from hers and she felt herself being shoved back, coming up from the water, from the terrible pressure. The light danced on the waves, and she was rising towards it, and she felt his absence like a draft, and suddenly, the water was hot, and the pain was hot-

"Cid!! **CID**!!"

She struggled against the vertigo as the light ripped her up, up, back into the pain and away from the cold, beautiful ocean that had swallowed him-

She reached out, reached back towards the water, but he was gone, and she was being pulled away-

And she let go.

Her mouth was dry, and there was pain…so much pain here. She opened her eyes, and there was the sting of a light above her, and-

Blue eyes, lit with grief, steady amongst the swirling room.

_Squall_.

"Quistis…you're…. you're awake."

Squall's eyes, wet with tears, above her like a cornflower sky- and she reached out to him, into a world of pain, and sacrifice, and accepted the bittersweet burden of living again.


	34. A Pound of Flesh

Author's note: There was an alternative ending to this story, one about a chapter long, in which neither of my protagonists made it. In this ending, Seifer and Quistis' graves lay side by side, and their stories were expounded upon by their mourners. In the end, it ended with a poetic sentiment, 'a knight and his lady'…etc etc. It was all very sad and pathetic. However, recent developments in my own life have made me long for a happy ending. I hope you'll forgive me for writing it. Hope you enjoy the chapter more than I enjoyed banging my head against my desk trying to write it. I apologize for these horrible content breaks, but the stupid computer won't show them any other way. Those of you who are reading this story for the second (or third) time (and if so, wow, thank you) will notice that I've changed Cid's assassin. It wasn't that I didn't like Xyrxis, he was cute and he had a cool and confusing name, but I felt that his villainy was somewhat, shall we say, out of the blue, and that his status as a minor character sort of made me not care that he had anti-war feelings from being an orphan and was turning against Garden, because until this chapter I didn't know who the hell he was and therefore didn't expect him to be loyal to Garden in the first place. I decided to use a more stock character, here, in the hopes that his defection would be somewhat more…bothersome. We'll see. At any rate, at least he'll go down as being more memorable in Garden history, which no doubt would make him happy.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything. But it isn't for lack of hoping.

Fire and Ice "A pound of flesh. No more, no less. His work done, he would go free." –MoV

I was raised from a broken seed, I grew up to be an unwanted weed.  
Ever faster the time exceeds me, little harder again to remember you.  
Held a torch for you, when lightning stroke me, once again, hope I died for the last time.  
Only one I have a thing greater than you, little light on the sky, every night.

Morning dew on the field, where I met you.  
I was frozen a year, couldn't get through.  
Got a sign, not a scar, on my shoulder, I am not quite the man you take me for...

Fell in love with the weakness within me.  
…Guess you found what you'd think would oblige me, little version of me to consume you...

I'd give my everything to you, follow you through the garden of oblivion.  
If only I could tell you everything, the little things you'll never dare to ask me...

How do you see me? - ... as the one?  
Can you see my blood when I'm bleeding?  
How can you love this exile, and how could I desire you.  
When my pain is my pain and yours is too...

-Sonata Artica, Broken

……………………………………

**Chapter 34-A Pound of Flesh**

"Two weeks," said Xu, as Rinoa handed out cups of clam chowder and plastic spoons to everyone in the small, cramped hospital room. The small seafood restaurant across the street, (overflowing with carry out orders from hungry, out of work soldiers), provided a welcome reprieve from hospital food.

"Why so late?"

"It's a trial, Zell," replied Xu, taking a seat on Quistis' bed, where Zell and Squall were already sitting on either side of her. Quistis almost felt like she was on a sardine train, but the close presence of her friends was a comfort.

Xu took a bite of soup, and swore when she burned her tongue. "The pace of court systems is naturally slow, not to mention that Galbadia is pulling out all its dirty lawyers to stall the process while they sweep their fiscal records under the rug. "

Squall, Irvine, and Quistis's hospital beds were all crammed together to make room for the extra chairs. Irvine was down the hall for the moment, enduring another stress test. Serabin, Selphie, Zell and Arya had all filed in, along with Nida, Balamb Garden's new lieutenant pro temp.

Xu sighed. "The Garden Council will call to order this Thursday in lieu of the Supreme Council meeting proposal. Drake Sirri and Syrus Worshen are going to push for the dissolution of Garden as an unstable military operation, and they've gotten several other mayors behind the proposal. Squall and I are going to push for the trial to go to the higher court division. However even if we gather together all of our current support and our saved political capital over the years to buy a few city governments, we're still grossly outnumbered."

Zell banged his fist on the side of Quistis' bed. "So what? Just like that, it's over? What about the fact that we **saved** most of their asses in the first place?"

Xu shook her head. "That doesn't matter. The damage done to Esthar is in the millions and rising. Galbadia and Balamb Gardens are going to need billions to rebuild. Casualties are in the thousands and also rising. Garden can't help but appear unstable."

Squall shook his head. "There must be some appeal we can make."

Rinoa set down her tray. "Laguna's on our side, that has to count for something-"

Xu's gaze sharpened when she looked at Rinoa. "Laguna's buried in four million gil worth of damage and one million frightened citizens, not to mention a cabinet that's pointing fingers left and right over the shield failure. I'm not sure that Balamb Garden is Laguna's primary concern right now."

Quistis almost felt sorry for Rinoa in that moment. Xu's temper was especially sharp these days, and Xu had never really liked Rinoa in the first place, which made her a perfect figure for target practice.

"I only meant-" began Rinoa meekly.

"Then we can't afford to wait. We'll simply appeal to the Garden council ourselves by filing a formal complaint against the Galbadian government, then make a motion to prosecute Galbadia at the international level, making it a matter of national security. They'll stall it, which will give us time to assemble our case as well." Interrupted Quistis suddenly. "Or, better yet, propose that they prosecute **us** at the international level, and then we file a joint injunction to try our cases simultaneously. There's an excellent precedent for it, seeing as this conflict has crossed multiple international lines and engaged at least three governments."

Everyone's attention was now on her.

"With what evidence do you propose to spear them with, precisely?" asked Xu. "All of our evidence regarding the IGCS system is purely circumstantial."

Quistis shook her head. "Not when it comes to financial links. Arya, is the back-up system for Garden's computing system operative?"

Arya grinned. "I've been working to forcep the database since we returned, actually."

"But Odine's files…" began Quistis, frowning. "Are they still intact?"

"Of course! Copies. All of my fine work has at least a thousand copies hidden across the globe in unsuspecting PC's."

"But how?" The entire room was now focused on Arya and Quistis.

"Why, the magic of ad spyware, of course. Computers become unsuspecting hosts one they accept our benign little informational cookies while visiting the site. The cookie is heavily encrypted, so the information is safe and the effect of the cyber-casing is dormant until I extract it. I used Selphie's website on the Balamb server as a distribution mechanism. Hope you don't mind, Selphie."

Selphie shrugged. "Why should I? I don't have a _clue_ what you're talking about."

But Xu looked pleased. "Looks like we're back in business, ladies and gentlemen. From now on, we work sun up till sun down. This case has to be air tight. No breaks until the trial starts. With trials being what they are, and with all due process, it should give us a few months. Still- I want you all working sun-up, sun-down, seven-days a week, starting right now-"

A collective groan arose, drowning out the other half of Xu's new agenda.

……………………………………….

…

…

…

"Bullshit."

Quistis was sitting up in her hospital bed, jabbing at the gelatinous mold that someone in the kitchen had the audacity to call food and glancing occasionally at the spread of cards in her lap. If she never saw gelatin again, it would be too soon.

"Damnit," muttered Irvine, picking up the three eights he had only moments before tried to pass off as Queens. His hospital gown was loosely bunched around his hips, and every so often, he itched at the spread of staples that sloped down from chest to belly button.

"Ha! Got you that time, Kinneas!" shouted Zell jubilantly from his perch between their beds, his leg elevated in the metal stirrup of his wheelchair. Irvine and Quistis had pushed their bed trays together to provide space for a messy card pool. "So much for that poker face a' yours!"

"I wouldn' talk, Zell, seein' as how you got about half the deck over there." replied Irvine darkly, reassimilating his deck.

Cerberus, curled at the end of Quistis's bed, raised his head for a moment and growled at Irvine's heart monitor as it gave a particularly obnoxious beat reading before returning his head to his paws. Zell had brought the large mongrel to visit. The hospital staff was less than pleased to have a 150 lb dog roaming the hospital halls, but the animal refused to leave Quistis' side and frankly, the already understaffed Tromedian hospital was not inclined to attempt removing him. The small town of Tromedia had been forced to make a lot of acquisitions since Balamb had dumped its wounded at their doors, however, and one dog amongst all the new chaos was nothing.

Zell scratched Cerberus' head before he stuck out his tongue and returned his gaze to his hand. "Half the deck? That's my strategy! It means I got the knowledge, baby! I got the power!"

In the bed next to Quistis, Squall rolled his eyes before pulling the hospital blanket over his head with his good arm.

"What it means," returned Irvine, "is that you're losin'."

They made quite the group. In the past week, the four friends had managed to exhaust the appeal of virtually every card game they knew, including Triple Triad. Irvine had also become an expert player in bedpan card throwing, while Squall was rapidly becoming an expert at throwing his bedpan at the doctors, who he accused of being a group of half-wit butchers. Squall, who by all accounts should have been out of the hospital weeks ago, was stuck due to a secondary infection in his arm from Adel's biotic wires. Pus had to drained daily from the wound, which strained Squall's already tenuous temper into something volatile.

Irvine had been heavily drugged the first few days and had acquired a slew of blackmail claims against him for reciting several incriminating stories under sedation. Zell had been blacklisted by the hospital cafeteria staff for food theft.

In short, there was never a dull moment.

The group's happiness was less brittle now, and though their initial sadness had been great, they drew from Quistis, who radiated a determination just as strong and solid as she had before. She was, after all, their beacon of hope. Their impossible phoenix. Their gratitude at having her with them diluted the pain of Cid's loss, if only for now.

As she had in the classroom, Quistis kept them all occupied, to preserve her sanity as much as theirs. Their attempt at a Triple Triad tournament had ended after only three days. Zell and Irvine hadn't been much competition against Quistis to begin with, and Squall had fallen asleep in the middle of virtually every other game she'd started with him. When they were all awake, Irvine and Zell acted as an efficient comedy team, and to everyone's surprise, even Squall attempted to crack a few dry jokes.

After days after days of being confined to bed rest, however, the four SeeDs were quickly getting restless. Squall, whose arm was set in pins not likely to come out any time soon, was often heavily sedated and drifted in and out of sleep.

Zell, confined to a wheelchair, had the freedom to come and go as he pleased, and spent the better part of the day hitching his wheelchair to Cerberus to utilize the massive dog as a carthorse of sorts. The dog didn't seem to mind and Zell was ecstatic with the arrangement, but there was always the danger of Cerberus spotting an imaginary rabbit or a flight of stairs that would break any and all of Zell's other bones that Quistis worried about.

Zell had taken upon his familiar role of group clown, doing his best to keep the other's spirits up. Since Cid's death, that had been quite a challenge, for Quistis knew that Cid's death had hit Zell acutely. For now, everyone seemed rather numb to the idea of what lay outside, as if Garden couldn't possibly destroyed and Cid not possibly gone. Cid's wishes had been to be cremated, and Edea had decided to postpone the ceremony until those in the hospital could attend. In the meantime, however, the group occupied themselves with the upcoming trial.

Quistis kept her own sadness to herself, and mourned for both Seifer and Cid late at night when she thought the others had gone to sleep. If Irvine heard her, he said nothing.

When she had awakened, person after person had poured into her room, and she had hoped that, eventually, a shock of blonde hair and green eyes would slip into her line of sight. When no such vision came, she had eventually asked Xu, and Xu had hesitantly told her the truth.

Irvine, Squall, and Quistis were the only ones truly stuck in the ward, but they usually had enough visitors to keep them company. Rinoa came every day, and Selphie and Arya were constant visitors. Serabin came as well, and supplied Quistis with a fresh supply of flowers with every visit. He was cordial as always, and polite, and was more than happy to fill Quistis, Squall, and Irvine in as to the changes being made.

The past few weeks had brought a flurry of change. This was good for Quistis, as it didn't allow her to dwell too much on her own thoughts. Squall, Irvine, Zell and the others did what they could to keep her occupied, she knew, and she was grateful for the distraction.

At the news of both Cid and Martine's death, search had quickly spread for a new Headmaster, even if that authority was entirely temporary. Squall had flatly refused the opportunity, preferring to remain in a realm with as few politics as possible. Xu had been the next logical choice, and the Lieutenant had quickly jumped at the nomination after her appointment to Headmaster pro-temp. Xu had long desired a promotion, and though she was sure the circumstances through which it was presented saddened her friend, now she had her chance.

In seeking a new Galbadian Headmaster, however, a somewhat more disturbing ballot was presented- Drake Sirri, Audren Banks, and, surprisingly, Serabin Glyphias had all been nominated. Quistis had been informed that Xu and Squall had used some on-loan political power to shove through the nomination for Glyphias, owing to his former association with the Galbadian Government and Galbadian politics. Galbadia had accepted, partially because of Glyphias' father's Senate association- it was a tactical move. Drake Sirri was a known Balamb opponent, and Audren Banks was a weak military antique from the previous Adel conflict- a puppet candidate. Serabin seemed the best choice for the job, but his official election was unlikely in a Garden Board still dominated by Galbadian power, (when that power finally realized that Serabin intended to push Balamb's case through to the Supreme Council.)

The Supreme Council was a collection of judicial and military authorities from around the globe- a representative from every major city. The Council rarely gathered, but when it did, it was for matters of great importance. The Council had gathered once to recognize Garden, and now, if men like Drake Winsburg had their way, the Council would now oversee its dissolution.

After another round of losing at cards, a frustrated Zell went back to the hotel, with Cerberus in tow. With a crushed left knee cap and a broken tibia and fibia on his right leg, he was in for a few rounds of physical therapy and a few months' recovery before he would be walking and kicking at 100 again, but Quistis was glad to see that his spirits remained intact.

Irvine leaned back in his bed and sighed. "Gonna go crazy if I gotta stay in here much longer. No steaks, no conjugal visits-"

Quistis smiled at him and a companionable silence filled the room, save for the beep of Irvine's heart monitor and Squall's slow, even breathing.

Quistis waited for sleep, but as always, sleep eluded her, dancing somewhere in the shadows on the ceiling. Quistis never eased peacefully into sleep anymore, but instead fought it, the back of her brain resisting the simple act that had almost killed her. When she did dream, it was of oceans and lost fathers…images she was in no hurry to see again.

After awhile of lying awake, Quistis pushed herself up in her cot, wincing as sharp pains shot up her arms.

Dull shards of moonlight filtered through the blinds, swaying on the linoleum floor.

"Irvine, are you awake?"

Across the room, Irvine drummed idle fingers on his chest. "Yeah. Can't sleep."

Idly, Quistis wondered if any of them had ever really slept. Even as children, they had slept poorly- more often than not, they would wander around at night, finding sympathetic insomniacs and finding trouble also. They seemed to share a kind of common loneliness. It was what wove them together so tightly, and what Rinoa could never share.

"I need to know what happened, Irvine," said Quistis. "I…_want_ to know what happened after Esthar."

Quistis heard him shift in the dark, hesitating.

"Well, after the dust cleared...everybody just sorta went back to Garden. Or what was left of it, which wasn't much, 'cept the metal frame and the end opposite th' library. Some of the junior classmen set up a couple of tarps and a few makeshift tables. Estharian government started clean-up, and the wounded were shipped off to Tromedia. The town's not real militia friendly, as you pro'lly know, but there wasn't anywhere else to go, and it didn't make sense to ship 'em so far when so many were critical. After that, it was just a matter of gettin' the teams together. Laguna and his team went as back-up, and the rest of the SeeDs who weren't critically injured and had high-risk op experience loaded on."

Quistis frowned. "And Seifer was chosen?"

She heard Irvine shift in his bed. "More like he demanded t'go, and Squall had his own reasons for lettin' 'im." A pause. "Good thing though. Wound up saving all our asses."

Quistis digested that for a long moment. "What...what exactly happened up there?"

"Really, I'm the worse person t' ask, Quistis. All I know after a certain point is what they told me." She could practically feel Irvine's frown through the dark. "Arya hacked open the duct system usin' a fueling imitation sequence. It worked, but...the thing sent a surge and nearly blew her ear drums. Felt like that building was alive, while we were in there. S'pose it was, in a way, because of Adel."

The heart monitor continued its slow beat. "It was...crazy up there. Doors were openin' and shuttin' like body parts. And those kids..." he sighed. "Everything just happened at once."

"...when we came into the main room, Almasy was just standing there, staring at Adel, and it was like they were havin' some conversation in their heads, the way Squall and Rinoa do, y'know. He had this look in his eyes...that old look, crazy, like he was at the parade again with Edea." A sigh. "Quis, you don't wanna hear any of this."

"Please...I want to know."

**I need to know.**

A sigh. "Serabin said that Brek was up there. Brek was apparently playing for the other team, and he and Seifer had quite the scuffle."

Quistis digested that for a long moment.

"Brek apparently sabotaged the Estharian auditing teams and stuck that virus shit in Serabin's neck...that's how the Estharian shield system went down, or so we think. Serabin really doesn't remember much, 'cept for shooting Brek an' tearing a hole in his own neck, then havin' his skull smashed through a ReGen tank."

"As for another leak, well, Squall's still convinced that there's another hole in B.Garden. Someone a lot smarter and more organized than Brek Garek. Someone to oversee the auditing teams and to keep Brek on a short leash. Someone with high clearance to fudge the reports, and to cover up the financial tracks. Flushin' that person out is provin' to be a little harder than we thought, though."

"…what happened to Adel?"

Irvine shifted again. "She was crazier than shit...man, those kids, Quistis. You an' Seifer were right. She had all those kids, and it was like she had 'em on puppet strings...One of 'em came up to me…had a gun in his hand and looked like demons were eatin' him away from the inside."

Irvine shifted again, and Quistis could hear the rattle of the mattress in the dark. "Pathetic. Like, I was trained practically my whole goddamned life to shoot the enemy, and I couldn't shoot one possessed kid." Irvine's voice wavered a bit before he cleared his throat, absently tracing the staples on his chest. "The rest...I don't remember much. Only what th' others told me. Xu says that Adel had Squall, broke his arm, and offered him up t' Seifer. Told him to kill 'em. An' then...Seifer killed her instead, I guess."

Quistis frowned. "But how...why…"

A rueful chuckle in the dark. "Who knows why Seifer's done any of th' things he's done, Quistis? Seifer never really was a soldier...not in th' way we were all trained t'be. Even as a child, he was different from the rest of us. I mean, we all lost our families, but Seifer took it all personally. Always did. He was always so pissed off at everything and everybody."

Quistis could not argue with Irvine on this one.

Irvine chuckled. "You know, though? I never hated Almasy, not even when we were fightin' him. Never really liked him- granted, he was a class-A jerk half the time and a selfish prick the other half, but the guy had a dream and he stuck to it. Gotta give that to him, you know? Takes resolve. Takes balls. If he were alive, think I'd thank him. Y'know, Xu said it was amazing to watch. Called up that fire cross limit of his, and took a swing over Squall's head right into her chest. After that, the whole Garden collapsed, and everything got lost in the rush. We…they tried to find Seifer, but the whole thing was going down, and Adel had tore him up pretty good anyway…"

Quistis bowed her head.

"We couldn't find him in time. We practically had to drag Squall away." Irvine paused. "'m sorry, Quistis. I know how you felt 'bout him."

_You offered. I accepted. That's all. _

_Embers from yesterday. Embers that still burned.  
_  
Quistis turned her head away from Irvine's voice, closing her eyes. "There was nothing between us, really."

"We tell ourselves a lotta things these days, Quisits." replied Irvine. "Doesn't make things any easier."

Quistis shut her eyes against the pillow case. _No. It doesn't. _

"Hey...Quis?" Irvine's voice, tentative.

"Yes?"

"I'm glad...I'm glad that you're here. Things…'d be a lot harder…if y' weren't."

She smiled, weakly. "I'm glad too, Irvine," she said, speaking against the heavy weight in her heart. "I'm glad, too."

Irvine glanced up at the ceiling after a brief pause. Quistis heard him crack his knuckles. Or maybe it was his back.

"Y'know, I didn't feel this bad at th' end of the first sorceress war. Maybe we're getting' old, huh?" He chuckled, ruefully, rolling up the hospital gown to scratch absently at the angry red line that tapered down his chest, surrounded by slightly puffed red skin.

They would all have their scars to carry from now on.

Quistis smiled in response. "I hear you. We walked away from Ultimecia. From what I hear, all of you barely got away from Adel."

"If it wasn't for Almasy, yeah. None of us would've. That room was tiny…an' those kids…" Irvine trailed off for a moment. "I've never seen anything like it."

"What's going to happen to those children?" asked Quistis. She remembered Sherri Guarsen, telling her to give her girls a better life if they were found…

"Odine called 'em the MagiTech. Those kids….metal grafted onto their flesh, like Adel's. Test subjects- Adel's little puppets. Most of 'em were dead, but we've got two of them. You should see 'em cast, though. Anything from Fire to Fira, no problem. Hard to remember that they're just kids. Can't imagine that they aren't messed up a bunch by the whole thing."

"Those poor children," whispered Quistis, ruefully. It was hard enough to be an orphan.

"They're in the hospital for now, getting' psych evaluations. Dependin' on what happens to Garden, they'll go back to the institutions or stay here and get an education. Probably be best for 'em if they come here, but we'll see. There's still the Supreme Council to think of, yet."

_Yes_, thought Quistis. _We'll see._

"Quis?"

"Hmmm?"

"You ever wonder if…well if maybe Garden's license _should_ be reinstated?"

"After all that Cid's done for us, you want to abandon his dream _now_?" It came out more sharply than she intended it.

"No…it's just…well…I'm tired, Quistis. I'm tired a' runnin', and fightin' and bein' shot at…I'm tired of people misusin' their power. Most of all, I'm tired 'a losin' people." Irvine sighed. "I'm just…real tired, you know? Cid built Garden to oppose the Sorceress. And now, well, the only Sorceress we have is Rinoa. What's that mean? One day, it'll be us against her? Feels like we're moving that way, towards something I don't think I want to see."

Quistis sighed, the anger fading from her. "Me either, Irvine. But…this is the only home I've ever had. And I have to believe that…that there will always be wars. There will always be people that abuse their power. But…I have to believe that things can change. That we can change them. And if not us, then who? I think Squall was right, that on some level, it feels like we were always meant to fight."

A companionable silence followed. Quistis and Irvine had always been friends, even as children. Irvine's more mellow nature somewhat offset Quistis' more structured demeanor, but the two had often retreated to one another when the others became too serious or too silly.

A frown knit Irvine's thoughtlessly handsome features for a moment. "Y'know, Quis, I can't help but think that maybe there's a reason why all of us made it out all right, y'know?"

Quistis looked over at Irvine. "Liberi Fatali, you mean." The words left Quistis' lips before she could stop them.

Where had that come from? It was as if it came from a lullaby, from her dream, from when before she had ever awakened...

""_Excitate vow e somno, liberi mei _

_Cunae non sunt-"_"

"What?" Irvine was looking over at her now, a curious look in his eyes.

_Had she said that out loud?_

_The fated children. Liberi Fatali.  
_  
A woman's voice, low and fading...rhythmic like the waves of the ocean and just as eternal. The music of their childhood, sung to them in a cottage by the sea before Fate would fit its burdensome mantle around their young shoulders.

"Liberi Fatali. Yeah, I almost remember that from somewhere..."

"_Excitate vow e somno, liberi mei _

_Cunae non sunt- _

_Excit vow e somno, liberi fatali, _

_Somnus non eat-"_

Quistis sighed. "Yeah. Me too."

_Their past lullaby….their future requiem._

………………………………………

…

…

…

The oil lamp kept the time of night as well as any clock. The wick wavered in the dark, and the oil was nearly exhausted from the small vial. Light played across the room of the small log cabin, and occasionally flickered on the figure sprawled across the small brown cot.

Seifer Almasy, the product of a trailer park romance, of a cancer-wilted mother and a dead-beat drunk of a father, was a curious cross of villain and hero. His fate rested on his own will, now, and it had never been more dangerous. His first run-in with destiny had landed him in a pay-by-the-hour roach motel, half dead and drunk on a filthy mattress and caught between caring and killing himself. Now, for the second time in his life, Almasy would have to find an internal reason for going on- the world outside him had been destroyed. Chu had revived him because he had owed the young man something, and because he sensed a faint whiff of a will still beating within him. Now, Seifer would have to get up again- he would have to crawl out from under his demons and his grief and find some shred of a hope to stand himself up on.

Chu watched him sleep in the lantern light and knew what he must do.

_To make a soldier, you must first break a warrior. _

Chu knew this lesson as intimately as his own identity. All of Almasy's ambition had to be quelled, his brashness rounded to fine points, and his spontaneity curbed. Seifer Almasy by nature was self-sufficient and unreliable—he was a loner by design, not by birth.

Chu knew the process of breaking a will quite well- he was once a warrior himself, after all, back when there was much that one righteous sword could accomplish. That fire had now tapered into a waning flame, one that was fading faster than ever. The sword had been lifted from his shoulders, and he would forever thank Almasy for that favor, however indirect. It was time now to repay that debt.

These were different times than the ones that he had lived in. This was not an era of warriors, or crusades. This was a time of soldiers, a time of discipline and wars of the masses. Even as Chu admired Seifer's singular passion, he knew it had to be destroyed.

In the dim light of the fading oil lamp, Chu studied his hands- the wrinkled, liver spotted skin- the failing flesh. The eternal parts of him had faded- poured into the spine of a nearly dead young man to save his very human life. Now he was left with only the common, flickering light of humanity- a dying light.

His gaze rested heavily on the sleeping man before him.

_To make this man, I must break him._

……………………………………..

…

…

…

"Gimme a girl that stays a while, a girl whose sunset 'kin stretch a mile, ah want an old fashioned, heart trashin', loves-life, trophy wife-"

Quistis looked up from her copy of "The Dolletian Temptress" to smile at Irvine's singing. After another moment, she shut the book, rolled her eyes, and promptly tossed it over her head. Didn't the main character know that it was virtually impossible to load a G-6 type Cowe hand pistol in under five seconds without significant risk of a rogue cartridge jam, to say nothing of doing it under fire?

"Ah want a girl that goes all night, 's pretty bright, a girl with a short skirt, make-it-hurt, down t' earth, fer what it's worth I jus' wanna girl like youuuuuuu-"

Irvine was currently spending quality time with the headphones, oblivious to everything else, but he did raise an eyebrow as he caught the paperback novel that came sailing towards his bed. "'Nother one bites the dust, I see," he observed, setting down his headphones. He opened the book to a random page, and read aloud, clucking his tongue. "His warm lips pressed against hers and her knees turned to liquid as he took absolute possession of her mouth. He caught her in his strong arms, and carried her to the four post Dolletian style bed…" Irvine looked up, laughing. "Ah, Belladine, you dirty slut."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "They meant well, anyway."

Since her stay in the hospital seemed prolonged, Rinoa and Selphie had brought her a care package that included the entire set of Coarny N. Hokkey's romance novels, which included (unfortunately) The Trabian Spy I Loved and other unlikely classics filled with vapid heroines and impossibly well-endowed heroes.

Quistis was willing to forgive her friends, however, as the care basket also included an assortment of vanilla and lilac scented creams and hand lotions to ease the itching and burning of the scars and a box of chocolates from a local candy shoppe, which she, Irvine, and Squall had devoured in less than a day. Squall was gone now and Irvine would be out of the hospital shortly, so Quistis appreciated her time with him while it lasted, as it kept the boredom at bay.

Arya had also stopped by, bearing gifts of a more practical nature. Per Quistis' request, Arya had obtained a laptop and a diskette with all of the information siphoned from both Martine's computer and the AmmuCorp company. Arya had also brought some homemade oatmeal cookies from both her and Ma Dinct. Both the chocolates and the cookies were a welcome break from less than desirable hospital food, and had to be guarded from other patients (namely Irvine).

Quistis now reached into the tin next to her bed, and munched on one of the moist, chewy morsels as she opened the laptop, turning it on. Irvine sat up in his cot and peered over her shoulder as he also dipped his hand into the cookie tin, grabbing a handful after a quick glance at the door.

"The nurse is going to kill you if she catches you with those cookies," said Quistis, without looking up. "Not to mention your over-protective girlfriend."

"Yeah, yeah, you'd think I got shot, 'er somethin'. A man can't eat in peace anymore." muttered Irvine. "What're ya lookin' at there, Quis?"

"Well," said Quistis. "As the authorities continue to decouple the larger remaining pieces of GenEden, they're going to find some very unique parts, no doubt. We've demanded a copy of the part sheets for comparison. I'm trying to match the spec sheets from AmmuCorp to Galbadia's order inventory for some of the more random parts."

"When's the Garden Council meetin', then?"

Quistis scanned the list, and highlighted a few items before pasting them onto a separate spreadsheet. "Two weeks. We don't have much time. This case has to be air-tight if we're going to push it to the Supreme Council."

"You spent all 'o last night looking up those sheets, Quis." Irvine shook his head before popping another cookie into his mouth. "You shouldn't be doin' that. You need your rest."

Quistis shook her head. "This is the only thing keeping me sane." She offered Irvine a smile. "Well, besides you and Zell, of course."

Irvine jabbed his thumb in the direction of a cork board in the corner, which sported an assortment of pictures from the Balamb team's stay in the hospital. One was of Zell wearing a bedpan on his head and sleeping with his mouth open.

"Zell? Zell's keepin' you sane?" Irvine shook his head ruefully. "You're in bigger trouble than I thought."

Quistis shook her head, smiling, and went back to the computer screen.

_AmmuCorp Spec Sheets:_

_Part 016838793789AF4D……………..twin cannon upgrades for type B model sensbot_

_Part3243D23456676545………………type clothing item 16 sized L,XL, M, therapeutic underwea_r

Quistis sighed. They documented everything on those damned sheets. This was going to take forever.

Incoming message

.:**Accept**?:.

Quistis examined the jumble of wires that were running from the small laptop, fairly certain that none of them connected to the phone jack. Did this laptop have a wireless internet card?

_A virus?_

Frowning, Quistis moved her finger on the mouse pad and clicked on the '_yes'_ option.

A window popped up, and Arya's beaming face came into view. "Hi, Quistis! Hi Irvine! This is a get well video card from all of us at the Esthar Inn!"

Arya, though adapting to the hearing aids, still had the propensity to shout- Quistis winced and turned the volume down.

Suddenly, a hotel lobby faded in, and music began to play in the background. There were papers scattered all over the lobby furniture, including soft drink and fast food wrappers. The SeeDs had apparently set it up as a makeshift office.

Suddenly, Zell's wheelchair zoomed on screen, and he began to sing, in a loud, off-key tone.

"Why do you fill me up, Buttercup, baby just to let me down, and mess me around-"

Quistis smiled, but that smile soon bubbled into a laugh when she saw Cerberus run on screen and begin to lick Zell's face. He was wearing a small sandwich board made out of cardboard that read, "Get Well, Quisty and Irvine!"

"Hey, dog, you're not supposed to be on now!" yelled Zell.

Irvine cocked an eyebrow at the noise coming from the laptop, and Quistis turned it towards him so that they could both watch the screen.

Selphie bobbed on screen just then, wearing a pair of bobbing antennae. Looking closer, Quistis could see that they'd put a pair of antennae on Cerberus' massive head as well, probably picked up from some gag gift store in Esthar.

"But worst of all, you never call baby, when you say you will-"

"Say you will!" chimed in Selphie, and Arya, who was now wearing a large plastic leprechaun hat. Quistis wryly wondered if they had been drinking.

"But I love you still-"

Cut to Serabin, who was draped across one particularly large couch, surrounded by highlighters. He raised his hand in a greeting, smiling indulgently for the camera before going back to his work.

A brief flash of Squall, who was sitting at a hotel desk, wearing a pair of fuzzy bobbers on his head, (that had obviously been placed there) looking thoroughly tormented. He was mouthing something that looked like 'save me', but Quistis couldn't be sure.

The tape then cut to Rinoa, who was also dressed oddly in a pair of plastic hot pink bunny ears, and held a large "We miss you" signed colored very badly with highlighters.

"-but you're late, I wait around and then-"

Back to Zell in the wheelchair, who was trying to spin without much success.

Another cut to Squall, who had his head in his good hand and was shaking his head with exasperation. His shoulders, however, seemed to be shaking with laughter.

The film cut back to Zell, who had managed to tip his wheelchair over. Cerberus was enthusiastically licking his face as Zell fought for freedom.

Irvine was now holding his sides and wincing, he was laughing so hard

The finale of the film concluded with the group assembling in the badly lit lobby, holding up the equally badly drawn signs.

A small text message blipped onto the screen after the video faded out.

Quis,

We'll all be there next Tuesday at 7am to go over our testimony for the court hearing. Zell says to write that we'll be bringing donuts, so, uh, we'll be bringing donuts. Hi Quistis! (That was Rinoa.) And Selphie says hi also. Serabin also sends his regards. Geez. I'm going to end this message now before I wind up sending the regards of the entire hotel. See you soon, and please pass along the message and video to Irvine.

-Arya (typing on behalf of everyone)

Quistis snapped the laptop shut and turned to Irvine, who was yawning.

"Do you have all the spec sheets highlighted, copied, and cut?"

"Yup. All set." Reaching around to his bedside shelf, he handed across a small stack of papers, all neatly organized and paper-clipped.

"Thanks, Irvine." Replied Quistis.

"Sure, no problem darlin'." Replied Irving. "Ready for the trial?"

"As we're going to be, I think."

A pause. "Sure is a lot quieter here without Zell around t' cause a ruckus and Squall t' tell 'im t' shut the hell up."

"They had to let him go," replied Quistis wryly. "They were losing too much in food costs. As for Squall, well, the nurses were all afraid of him."

Irvine chuckled. "Only Zell could love hospital food."

"Oh I don't know," replied Quistis. "It's beginning to grow on me. Literally."

Irvine winked at her. "What say you we play hooky and see what's goin' on in the game room?"

She grinned. "You were always getting me in trouble, even as a kid."

"Now that," said Irvine, doing his best to look hurt. "is a damned lie, Quistis Trepe, and you know it. It was you that was always getting' innocent lil' ol me into trouble."

"It was not!" replied Quistis, laughing but knowing that he was probably half-right. She did remember daring him to eat bugs on more than one occaision, and on more than one of said occasions, remembered him doing it. "Remember when you dared me to climb the tree, and left me there?"

"I do not recall that, no." Irvine had a little of the old gleam in his eyes. "Well, in the spirit of getting' in trouble, what say you an' me have a wheelchair race down t' the cafeteria t' pilfer some ice cream?"

"Last time you and Zell did that, I thought they were going to actually throw you out of the hospital."

"You're no fun at all, Quis. I'm gonna go harass us up some ice cream."

"I'll take sherbert," called Quistis after him.

After Irvine was gone, she glanced a moment at her bedside table, where a bronze star bathed in the cheap light of the hospital lamps. Narrowing her eyes, she turned back to her computer screen.

…………………………………………………..

…

…

…

He was dressed in a mess of old clothes, layered on to keep out the pervading cold. A dark down trench coat with wooden buttons and about a million patches hung on him like a damp rag- all of the clothes in the cabin were too big for him. A pair of scuffed brown boots two sizes too big were stuffed with socks and hung open, the laces undone and the tongues sticking out. He was thankful for the cold, as it meant he couldn't smell the stench of the rotting house or his own skin after not showering in days because his nose was too busy running.

The marks on his back were itching again. It was making him impatient. Hell, this hole in the snow was making him impatient. He rolled to a sitting position, tapping his feet against the floor. He was going stir crazy in this damned hovel with an old man that was quite possibly crazier than he was.

He looked down at his arm, the useless appendage that hung limply at his side. Dark marks snaked up the arm like vines, broken veins whose rupture seemed to have permanently stained his skin. He curled his lip in disgust. Cripple. Fucking cripple.

Chu was drying dishes with an old pink towel, glancing back at him periodically. "Talking to yourself again?"

Had he been? Shit. "This arm," snarled Seifer. "It's fucking useless."

Chu snorted. "As long as you favor it, yes, useless," agreed the old man, turning back to the sink and mumbling about young men favoring their misfortunes. Seifer resisted the urge to brain him with one of the hanging kettles. He concluded, eventually, that killing Chu was a temporary solution with long term problems. They'd be snowed in if the snow kept up, and the body would stink up the place. The place had enough nasty smells to contend with already.

_Later, then. I'll kill him later._

"Favor it? It's fucking liquid waste, you old fool."

"You know, if someone gave you gil every time you said word fuck, you be millionaire." Chu set down the towel. "Maybe stop wallowing, start working."

"Work on _what_? You want me to go shovel the fucking mountain?"

"Lazy," muttered Chu, shaking the towel at him. "You have become complacent with failure."

That did it. Seifer got to his feet, knocking over the small table in front of him. "Lazy? Am I supposed to be _inspired_? What the fuck have I got to go back to? Cid's as good as dead, and so's his deal with the Galbadian government, which means they'll be hunting me just as hard as before, only now they'll be sending their assassins in the broad daylight."

"That stopped you before?"

"Well it's different now, isn't it? Everything and everyone I ever cared abo….it's all gone, all right? There's nothing to go back to."

"How you know everything is gone?" asked Chu over his shoulder, drying another glass and throwing it over his shoulder.

Seifer sneered. "For someone so fucking omnipotent, you sure ask a lot of _stupid_ questions."

Chu shook his head. "You have not taken head out of ass since woken up. How you know how things are?"

"Just stop with your fucking questions!" yelled Seifer, turning over a chair, which splintered across the floor. "What did you drag me here for? Why didn't you just let me die?"

"Not your time," replied Chu calmly.

"Not my-" Seifer stammered, real, potent fury lighting his eyes. "Just who the hell made you _Hyne_?"

Chu met his gaze evenly, retracting nothing.

Another kick sent the table sprawling in several different splinters and directions. "**Fuck** this hole in the ground, **fuck** life, and **fuck** you and your god-complex!" he shouted, storming out the door.

"See? You fucking millionaire!" Chu started to follow him. "What the hell you doing? Idiot!"

Seifer mumbled to himself as he slammed the door behind him and stormed past Chu out into the snowstorm. The snow drift that had accumulated above the front door crumbled down, immersing the short old man in white, cold powder.

"Anqiquis temporibius, nati tibi similes in repuibus ventosissimus exponebantur ad necem!" shouted Chu, shaking his fist at Seifer as he tried to dust off the small mountain of dirt that had accumulated on his head and shoulders before turning back to the room.

"Don't talk to me in that **fucking** butcher's tongue!" shouted Seifer, before Chu slammed the door on him.

Chu raised an eyebrow, surveying the tattered room in front of him. Well, at least the young man was outside now, something Chu's own repeated suggestions had not accomplished.

Anger. It was a start. Chu turned back to the dishes.

As a wasted drunk after the first sorceress war, Almasy had sought salvation. He had sought purpose. Garden had been the only remaining outlet for such a desire, because, unconsciously, Seifer also sought forgiveness. Chu knew enough about Seifer's origins to be analytical about the young man's genetic compositions- his tendencies, his fighting styles. His spirit, especially.

Seifer had always considered himself to be the product of a failed drunk of a father. It was a legacy that he had always struggled against, constantly wary of his reflection. But it was the mother's blood that ran hotter in the boy. It was the memory of his mother that made him honest, that made him redeemable.

"Idiot." Muttered Chu, wiping his hands on the dish towel before throwing it across the room.

Seifer was currently stalking around outside, slouching slightly to the side as he favored his injured arm, cursing everything within hearing distance and kicking rather uselessly at the woodpile.

Chu recognized in Almasy the same fire that once beat in his own ancient heart- the relentless blood of a true warrior, one set more in determination than in the grace of a pure-blooded hero. He knew that Seifer's head could be turned either way along this vein- to a cause either pure or tainted- as long as it was sufficiently compelling. One war had led him in one direction, and the other in quite another.

The difference had turned out to be one woman.

Chu was not surprised. He had seen Quistis the warrior and Quistis the woman, and the girl was an enigma in either capacity. Quistis had been his redemption initially, but now, Seifer would have to find his own. Inspiring him to do so would be quite the task.

"I fucking hate this place!" Outside, Seifer Almasy had resorted to taking out his frustration on snow drifts, with minimal success.

Seifer Almasy could be corrupted. But he could also be redeemed. And, in reparation for a service done for Chu long ago, the old man was willing to see it through…no matter what the cost.

For the next hour, Chu watched out the window as Seifer moved around snow drifts with his feet, and inch by profane inch, proceeded to become, in theory, the richest man on the mountain.

…………………………………………………..

…

…

…

Quistis spent the next few weeks torn between being happy that she had lived and wishing she had died.

Kadowaki went from being a doting mother figure to the devil incarnate. They ran so many IV's through her that she began to feel like a human pin cushion. Kadowaki insisted on flushing her system with saline daily. After each bout of needle sticks, Quistis felt like throwing a bedpan at someone. After the surprise enema, Kadowaki had to duck.

Quistis looked doubtfully down at her jello, which wiggled up at her with green enthusiasm. She was propped up in her bed, staring boredly out into the hallway and watching hospital patrons shuffle by- little white ants with needles. Big needles. There were days when she wished for a large magnifying glass.

With Irvine gone, her days passed her by like a kind of dream, and it was as if she were in a coma again, except for the fact that her comatose dreams had been filled with Cid and her mother, and this dream was filled with strangers and constant blood transfusions. Frankly, she preferred the dreams.

To say she disliked hospital life would have been a gross understatement- if she could walk with any kind or reliability, she would have been out of there like a Moomba with its ass on fire (Zell's phrase). Quistis was restless to prepare for the trial, and her restlessness was infectious. The group's somber and solemn state at their Headmaster's loss was soon replaced with a temporary fire to avenge him. The grief would break through eventually, but for now, the group was intent on the mission at hand, just as they had been trained.

Cid's funeral had been postponed in light of the current situation, and Quistis wanted to be able to stand over Cid's tombstone with the knowledge that she had done all she could to avenge his death.

Instead, she was given little else to do than lay in the bed and 'recover', which meant rotting in dirty linen, watching daytime rerun infomercials, enduring endless and painful transfusions, and wasting precious time. If it had been any other condition, modern medicine would have her out of the hospital with Irvine a month ago. But mag-poisoning was a different case. The build up of magic plague had to be filtered out slowly, and monitored constantly.

Despite her appreciation for modern medicine, Quistis knew that if she didn't get out of here soon, she'd go crazy and hold one of those masochistic nurses at syringe-point to make her escape. Quistis made a note to tell Arya to bring her an extra laptop and some highlighters during her next visit, so that she could get going on the AmmuCorp spec sheets and divert her boredom in more appropriate ways. She had ordered Arya to hack and print out all of Odine's inventory sheets, as she was more than certain that was where the missing parts for GenEden would match and incriminate both Odine and Martine in the incident. Arya was also busy interlacing all of Galbadia and Esthar's 'alternative' secret accounts into Odine and Martine's own private funds. Due to the abruptness of GenEden's corruption, neither Odine nor Martine had had time to sweep all of their financial misconduct under the rug.

Serabin had promised to visit today, and Quistis found herself looking forward to it. Serabin had visited often after his recovery, always bringing a fresh supply of flowers with him as well as news of the trial. Quistis could smell his latest offering every time she turned her head- a spray of purple and white lilacs. Serabin, like the rest of them, was a little worse for wear: he had been forced to get his head shaved to allow for the seventeen stitches required to sew up his skull. In the past two months, his hair grown, and the shorter, silver hair that now hung in his dark green eyes made him look younger, even if the scar that ran from skull to cheek made him look strong and tired in a very ancient way. Serabin was always kind, and too careful with her, as if she were made of eggshells both inside and out. Seifer would have sat next to her bedside and annoyed her into walking.

Seifer.

A hard lump formed in her chest at the mention of that name, and she had to stare hard at the ceiling to clear her eyes.

No body parts of Seifer's had been found in the wreckage, and although there was no reason to believe that anything would have survived such a fall, there was a tiny glimmer of hope in her that she refused to acknowledge, one that loomed like a too-bright shadow in her breast. On better days, she could think of him faintly- think of him like a watercolor memory splashed in with her childhood recollections, sweet and untainted by the storms that had followed in her later years. On bad days, she remembered everything.

She remembered him in the beginning, slouched and defeated, skinny and hollow. She remembered him on the train that night in Balamb, sweet and distant. And in the snow that night, his skin warm against hers, and later in her bed, when she had reached out her hand to the opposite side of the bed not to find it empty, but occupied, and it had been the sweetest dream that she had allowed herself in her life. She imagined a house by the sea, like her mother had, of a skirt the twirled with the ocean breeze-

And then she thought of the morning, when he had looked at her so distantly, it was herself she had blamed. It was her own heart that she had broken.

**Enough of this.**

She wiped furiously at her eyes, angry at herself. Serabin would be here soon, and she had no wish to explain her tears.

Quistis sat up a little straighter in her cot, smoothing her hair with one hand and wincing as her arm IV caught. She adjusted her hospital gown, trying stuff the edges under her butt to make the thing look less dumpy, and then immediately felt ridiculous. Here she was, unshowered and covered in wires, and she was trying to look presentable.

A knock at the door.

"Come in," she replied, untucking her hair from behind her shoulders.

A shadow cast along the edge of the doorway, and Quistis looked up to see Nida, second in command, looking back at her.

"Hello, Quistis," he said, bowing slightly. He was holding a spray of flowers in his fist, which she accepted.

"Thank you." she replied, pleased but puzzled that Nida was here. Perhaps he could tell her what was going on back at the Esthar Inn. "What brings you here?"

"Just stopped by for a visit," replied Nida, shutting the door behind him. "Where's Irvine?"

"They're running some stress tests," replied Quistis. "But he's been out for a few weeks now. Would you like to sit down?" she asked, gesturing to one of the chairs beside her bed.

"Thank you, Quistis, I'll stand. And Zell?" Nida looked around the room.

"They let him go home. You've been scouting the Galbadia wreckage, haven't you? You wouldn't know, I suppose." she said. "What's going on at the Esthar Inn?"

Nida's eyes narrowed as he glanced behind him, but as he turned back, he was smiling at her. "Things are pretty busy. Xu's off at Trabia garden, talking with the Headmaster and setting up their testimony. So far all their evidence is pretty weak or circumstantial, but it's not for lack of effort."

Quistis shook her head. "It won't be. Not for long. Not with the computer records."

"Hmmm? And which are those?"

Arya hadn't told him? They'd all been busy, perhaps they hadn't had time to collaborate on evidence yet. "Arya and I have a pretty incriminating of record of correspondence between Odine and Martine, as well as part and spec sheets that should match up exactly with Galbadia's inventory. That should stick, if nothing else. I haven't had the chance to speak with the others yet, but I'm sure Arya has."

The vice commander smiled. "I should think so." He leaned closer. "Thank you, Quistis. You've been very helpful."

Helpful?

There was something wrong with Nida's gaze. Something intent and misplaced. The young man was leaning closer now, and Quistis found herself pressing her back into the pillow. Her old soldier instinct was flaring.

_This is Nida…Balamb's vice-general. Dependable, practical Nida, SeeD, friend, pilot…._

_This is impossible..._

And then she remembered what Squall had said.

_"There's a leak in Garden...we just haven't found it yet..."_

And then her mind drifted back to something that had been bothering her. She could feel the pieces in her mind, now itching to connect. How could Galbadia Garden have found Balamb Garden outside of Esthar? Unless someone had sent them the coordinates…unless someone had sent them our rendezvous point and time. The Esthar mission was top secret- no one expected Squall to honor that contract.

Someone sold the coordinates. Someone sent them the time and the place and the location we were going to establish air space. But no one would know the specifics but the pilot….

Nida…

Her hand was already drifting towards the bottom of the bed, towards the call button...

"How have I been…helpful? Surely Arya must have told the others...you…"

Nida seemed to measure something in her gaze, and sighed. He leaned forward, and set down the flowers by the side of her bed. "Quistis, I had hoped it would not come to this."

"Come to what?" she asked.

"You're a smart girl, Quistis, smart and not quite smart enough. It's rather ironic." Leaning down, he quickly pulled out the wires that snaked beneath her bed.

So much for the call button.

By instinct, Quistis took inventory of her surroundings and abilities. There were no weapons in the room, and certainly, no magic to be had. Quistis summoned her strength, and found it inadequate. She felt dizzy. She had nothing to bean him with but a dish full of jello.

Not like this...not on my back in a damned hospital bed...in a panic she hit the button again, but the door remained closed, and suddenly Nida had snatched her hand.

"It won't help...the door is locked." he said in an infuriatingly soothing voice. "Are you feeling sleepy, Quistis?" He held the pillow out like a shield. She looked into her former comrade's eyes and knew that he could kill her, would kill her. They were both SeeDs, they had endured the same training and could kill each other as easily as they could kill a stranger.

"I want to know why."

_If only I had my whip...I could have him hog-tied by now..._

"You know, it's interesting. I had to hold Serabin down and hijack his brain to betray his beloved Balamb. The guy turned his back on his principles for an institution that manufactures orphans just like it manufactures soldiers. THAT's the ultimate weapon, Quistis. An institution that makes soldiers by making orphans, by manufacturing loyalty out of loneliness. Did you know that my parents were killed in the Second Sorceress War? By friendly fire…by the people that were supposed to protect them. Cid had my records sealed when I came here, but I found out, anyway." Nida walked over and locked the door. "I confronted him with it. I said that he had always told us that soldiers were supposed to protect the weak. He gave me this sad, simpering little look, and told me that unfortunately it didn't always work that way. I wanted an answer, and he handed me excuses. It wasn't good enough, I told him. He wasn't good enough."

Quistis looked at Nida as if she had never seen him before.

He's **crazy**.

He's **the leak.**

Quistis raised her chin. "There will always be wars. It's the nature of the world. Garden, at least, was an impartial interference that could act on behalf of those who asked for help. You signed up for it too, you believed it, or you wouldn't have-"

"You shut up! Garden makes soldiers, because it makes wars! It makes wars, because it needs soldiers! Don't you see that? It's not a home! It's a death factory!" he shouted at her, a feral look in his eyes, and Quistis abandoned her button pushing to grip the railing. The room was spinning.

Quistis blinked at him. This was Nida and this was not Nida, her old friend and a monster both.

All at once, Nida was calm again. "Institutions like Garden killed my family, Quistis, and then I became part of the instrument that made me an orphan. Did you know that I killed 47 people before my 18th birthday? And what did they do? They gave me a silver bar. They made me a SeeD. I traded my childhood to become a war machine, and Cid pinned a medal on my vest. Did you know that Martine, Galbadia wanted to create an initiative that tied the Gardens to the United Nations of Peace, to a government initiative for voluntary disarmament? It was in the planning stages, and no one had heard about it. And Cid refused."

Quistis was angry now. "Cid refused because he saw through Martine. And with good reason! Martine, all that time, had been planning GenEden with the Galbadian government. They weren't drafting a peace treaty, they were setting the stage for a military monopoly. You, on the inside, could have seen that better than anyone!"

"But Cid should have seen that Garden wasn't the solution! That war-for-hire was just war profiteering on a mobile scale. What was needed was a unilateral power, a single force that could keep the peace. Martine saw that. Why couldn't Cid? Why can't you?" The sheen in Nida eyes was crazy, his lips twisted into a half-smile, half snarl. "I wanted it to stop after the IGCS disaster. That should have been enough to impose military sanctions, to shut the Gardens down. By the time I realized what GenEden was, I realized that Martine had lost it…but it came to the same end, didn't it? The end of Garden. And so I kept silent."

Nida was pacing now. "I had to shoot Cid, don't you see? He would have fought the sanctions and rebuilt Garden...he would have started everything over again. He didn't care about us. All he cared about were his contracts...his armies. His little orphan soldiers. " He clucked his tongue. "And now, because of him, you have to die. Of course, Arya will have to die too- contracts will trace to me as the primary contact, and Squall will have questions." he muttered. "Something tells me, when this is all over, that emo prick is going to remember my name for once."

**Cid. You killed Cid.**

Anger burned in Quistis, hot and bright. Get up, Quistis. Get UP. Quistis began to slope one calf down the side of the bed, preparing to make a lunge for it. If she could just get ahold of one of the shock paddles, she could turn out some lights, knock him out-

Quistis had never been a woman to go quietly into the dark night, and had no intention of starting now.

If Nida noticed her sliding out of bed, he ignored it, gripping the pillow with violent force.

"I was surrounded by morons. Brek Garek was ambitious, sure, but he was as dumb as Martine. What happens with an ultimate weapon? An ultimate end. But Brek didn't see that- he saw a future at the helm of that thing and tied himself to it." Nida just shook his head. "Martine wanted Garden to be the ultimate weapon. I wanted Garden destroyed. I suppose we both got what we wanted. I suppose it doesn't matter how."

Quistis inched a little farther off the bed.

Nida looked almost sad. "I always liked you, Quistis. You had balls. You had honor. You remembered my name."

She responded by throwing her jello at him. The dish ricocheted harmlessly off his forehead and clattered to the floor. If he was surprised, he didn't show it, even with green slime dripping down his face.

"Goodnight, Quistis." With that, he lunged down at her, pillow outstretched, his face curiously blank.

It all seemed to happen at once.

Quistis rolled off to the side, trying to scramble weakly to her feet. She was jerked back by the previously forgotten iv, which ripped out of her arm in a painful spray of blood and fluid. She cried out in pain and tried to roll, but Nida was on her in an instant. She brought her knee up, heard him yell when it connected with his groin before he slammed her head back into the ground.

A dull crack, then darkness for a moment, and when she opened her eyes she saw nothing but dark, and breathed in a cloud of warm cotton.

"Still a fighter, aren't you? Amazing. Cid taught us well, didn't he?"

Her legs squirmed, weakly, tangled in his, slippery on the wet floor. He had the pillow over her head, and she thrashed, bringing her arms up to grasp clumsily at his neck, clawing into his skin with fading strength, and she was fading, too, the sounds and the feeling in her arms were turning off like switches, one by one-

**Crash**.

The noise thundered through her ears, and Quistis ripped her eyes open to see the hospital room lights glaring down at her. Dimly, she realized the door had been torn off his hinges, and that people were now screaming in the hallway.

Green eyes stared down at her.

"S..Seifer?"

But they were the wrong color. The eyes were a light jade, an almost grey hue of emerald.

Serabin.

The world came back into focus, and it moved very quickly. Serabin and Nida were struggling next to the bed. Nida had Serabin by the throat, and Serabin was squeezing a pressure point at his shoulder, trying to release him. Even if Nida was more robust, Serabin towered over him, and had an added leverage. Serabin lowered his shoulder suddenly, and threw Nida hard into the floor. Serabin kicked him soundly in the stomach when he tried to get up, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him up against the wall.

"I had to do it! Don't you see? Brek messed up and you wouldn't listen to reason-"

"Shut up!" snarled Serabin, slamming him back against the wall.

Quistis took in a deep, shuddering breath. The noise seemed to break the heavy spell in the room. Breathing heavily, Serabin dropped him and immediately turned towards Quistis, grabbing a sheet and holding it firmly to her arm, which was now wet with blood from the severed IV line.

"Are you all right?" he asked, gently.

She could only nod.

Nida was laughing. "Don't you see? Don't any of you fools see? You're as bad as he was! As blind, as greedy-"

"Shut up!" snarled Serabin.

Quistis gasped for breath, taking great, hungry gulps for air as the dizziness faded and holding onto Serabin's arm for dear life. "He killed Cid," she rasped, the tears brimming in her eyes, guilt flooding through her for ever suspecting that Serabin could be the leak in the system.

"I know. I know. We've suspected him for awhile now, that's why Squall dispatched him to Galbadia. Odine just named him in the questioning."

"You…you actually got Odine to talk?"

"Sodium pentothol." Serabin's arms tensed around her. Nida was still babbling in the corner, his eyes filled with a wild, crazy light.

"The authorities will be here soon." he said quietly, easing her down onto the floor.

"You fools!" shouted Nida. "You're nothing but war machines! You're the problem, the epidemic-" Serabin got up, walked calmly over to Nida, and struck him in the face hard enough to send his skull crashing against the wall. Nida slumped against the wall, silent, a small trickle of blood pooling down the corner of his mouth.

Serabin walked back to her and lifted her up, even as the nurses poured in, some of them screaming in surprise. She could hear noise outside, indicating that perhaps the authorities had indeed arrived.

She looked up at him, her fingers cutting into his shoulders, and tried to make the room stop spinning. She had the sudden desire to say something profound, to thank him for saving her life.

But there, sprawled on the hospital floor, with her hospital gown indecently flapping open and blood and iv fluid running down the front, she was at a complete loss for words or common sense.

Instead, she managed, "Threw...my jello..." And passed out.

…

……………………………………………

…

…

…

"Aut vincere aut mori."

"Fuck yourself."

"Pick up the stick."

"Pick up your own stick, you lazy old bastard."

The argument, though far from eloquent, would receive debate points for longevity. The two fur-clad figures had been standing in the snow for the last hour an a half, pink-cheeked and yelling at one another over a stick lying on top of the snow. The argument had lasted so long due in part to the fact that Chu had locked Seifer out of the shack to begin with.

"Aut vincere aut mori, Seifer."

"I told you, don't talk to me in that fucking butcher's tongue," he snarled.

"Scared of a language? Bah!" replied Chu. "Scared of a shadow!"

Seifer mumbled to himself. "So what's new for today? Another exercise in futility?"

"If you exercised your arm half as much as your mouth, you would perhaps be more capable swordsman and less an idiot." Replied the old man sourly, leaning on his staff. "As it stands now, you are more fit as politician than as soldier."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "This whole thing is like a low budget kung-fu film. What, are we supposed to balance on rocks now? Are you going to feed me some half-assed crap about becoming one with the stick?" a heavy force caught him about the chest just then, and prevented him from making further predictions about the day's activities. He tumbled backwards into a snowdrift, looking up to see Chu's small but imperious face staring down at him.

"To live twice is to gain useful profit from one's past." He said, settling the stick back into the snow, and resorting to his own tongue, which held more elegance than his choppy version of Seifer's language. "For one who has lived many lives you remain terribly stupid, eh? Now. Get up. You are made of better stuff than defeat. See? You grabbed the stick, did you not? Apparently your will to fight is not as weak as your pathetic will to live."

Seifer looked down to see the stick, barely grasped in his sword hand. So what? He looked up to glare at Chu. "You're wasting your time. Didn't you know? Failure is pretty much a family heirloom in the Almasy name." Seifer glared bitterly at the stick in his hand, barely grasped in the weak grip.

"Was your mother a worthless woman?"

Seifer's eyes narrowed. "No." He was so angry at Chu, he could barely see straight. He rushed him again with the stick, swinging as hard as he could, but only managed a sloppy, crooked, downward slice, which Chu easily deflected.

"Did she die a disgraceful death, ankle deep in self defeat, BOY?"

Boy….boy….**boy**…..His father's face, looming in front of him, the cracks on the back of his head, the crows, flying away, when all he could do was grasp at air-

"Don't call me boy! I'll fucking kill you!" Another swing, this one slightly straighter but still a little wobbly. Chu cracked the stick back at him, the tremor traveling up his arm to mix with the pain and feeling there. He lost his balance, falling to his knee in a dizzy, angry arc.

"Cave canem, te necet lingendo." ridiculed Chu. "Is that all you have, **boy**?" Mocking, he urged him forward with the crook of his finger.

Seifer snarled, swinging again, the pain fresh in his arm but he didn't care. Chu deflected this one with slightly less ease. Seifer staggered off to the side, breathing hard. The pain in his arm made him want to puke.

"All your life, you fight. Even now." Chu looked down at him with an airy look on his face. "You are perhaps your mother's son, then, eh?" said Chu, staring hard into his eyes. With that, the old man turned to walk back inside.

Seifer looked down at his hand, and the stick that balanced loosely in it.

**His mother's son.**

…………………………………………..

…

…

…

"Whoa, easy there, Quis," said Zell, as Quistis took a very wobbly but determined step forward, her eyes stubbornly fastened to the end of the room. Her hand was balanced shakily on Zell's wheelchair armrest, and her other hand dug into Irvine's shoulder.

"You sure you don't want a break, darlin?" asked Irvine, glancing at his friend with concern.

"I'm sure," replied Quistis, grimacing as she took another step forward. "The trial begins in a few weeks. There's no time to waste."

"Are you sure you aren't just anxious to get ready for your date with Serabin?" asked Xu, leaning on one of the walking railings in the physical therapy room.

Xu received 'The Look of Death' from her friend, a look usually reserved for wayward students or one very famous ex-knight. Xu was happy to note that a little of her friend's fire was returning. "It's not a date."

"Hmmm...dinner? Check. Movie? Check." Xu counted off the criterion on her fingers. "Sounds like a date to me."

"He saved my life. It's the least I can do." In truth, Serabin had asked long before the Nida incident.

As if by some unspoken agreement, none of them spoke of Nida, who was now confined to the D-district prison, refusing to speak, and awaiting trial. Ironically, he had already become a ghost, more nameless now than he had ever been at Garden. Xu had perhaps been the most surprised by his betrayal, but she hid her emotions well, and it was impossible to tell just how much it had affected her.

Xu grinned, edging closer to whisper in her ear before stepping back. "Mmm. It's not the LEAST you can do."

Quistis glared over at her friend as she took another step, nearly rolling the ball of her foot. "Don't you have anywhere else to be?"

"Other than right here, watching as my best friend recuperates? Of course not."

Quistis rolled her eyes. "Still meddling, aren't you?"

Xu winked. "It passes the time."

Quistis continued to struggle with her feet. In the few weeks' time she had been out, her muscle tone had waned. Her body was still weak and adjusting to the transfusions, and she slept more often than not.

She stumbled again, and she could feel their concern and their pity, and the knowledge of it tasted bitter.

**Enough of this.**

Staring hard ahead at the open window, she removed her hands from her two surprised friends, and gritting her teeth, took a determined step forward, ignoring the fatigue that crashed through her body at the lack of support. She nearly fell over, but she righted herself, the pain in her arms heavy like lead but her heart straining towards the breeze that wafted in from the window.

**Cid…**

For the second time in her life, Quistis Trepe learned to walk, staring hard at the open window and hoping that some measure of sunlight lay outside it.

………………………………………………………….

…

…

…

"Fucking crazy old fool," muttered Seifer beneath the large Wendigo-skin hood. Hyperion's pieces were draped over his back in a large rag, and the weight bore heavily on him in the snow for more than one reason. Some hundred miles behind him lay Chu's shack, where no doubt the old man was laughing himself to death at Seifer's expense. The mountain was at best hostile, and probably navigable only to the local goat population. After hours of wading through snowdrifts that looked exactly alike, he was absolutely exhausted.

"You must go. Reforge blade." Mimicked Seifer under his breath, using Chu's naturally choppy accent as he stomped angrily up one particularly steep hill. "Cast new light on the-_**fuck**_!"

He hissed and snatched his foot back just in time to see a large chunk of the mountain break away under his foot, sailing down in a cloud of white and rock. He took startled, stumbling step back, gazing down at the thousand foot fall that lingered just inches from his boot tip.

For the millionth time, he wondered at the purpose of the journey. Reforge Hyperion? For _what_? What good could the sword possibly accomplish now? The only good thing that sword had ever done was to kill Adel, and that was done. What the hell was there left to fight for, then?

His _romantic dream_?

Romantic dream. Ha. Seifer sneered beneath the hood. Here, given the rather lofty perspective of being knee deep in a snow covered mountain, it seemed no more than a childish fantasy, one that had taken to the ends of the earth and the ends of his sanity, and had cost him everything he had ever cared about. A dream a shadow had dreamt beneath the deeper shadows of a card table.

**Some fucking dream.**

He knew Chu wanted him to go back. To rejoin the land of the living. And just what the hell would await him? Would the Galbadian government still have an array of secret bounties on his head? Probably. Rajin hated him, and the others…nothing had changed. There was nothing to go back to.

He had finally run out of roads.

Seifer inched his foot forward a fraction, watching as more snow sailed off to spiral down in the heavy gusts of wind that cut through the mountain crags. It would be so quick…so clean. There would be the wind, and then nothing. Maybe he would see her face again, one last time.

_How many times could a man die? How many times could a man be reborn?_

Seifer waited in the silence, but the snow carried no whispers. He inched another step forward, feeling his heart lurch at the height. Absently, he wondered if it would make a sound.

**If a body falls down a mountain, and nobody hears it, am I still dead?**

**Shut up, Almasy. **

Minutes ticked by. The wind howled beneath the hood, the cold biting at his fingertips.

**Down, down, down**. Dreams were like flesh. They crushed so easily.

Just one more step…and then….

"_You think things happen for a reason and all that bullshit."_

"_Not exactly. I think there are reasons for the way things happen. Cause and effect." _

"_What, like a butterfly beats its wings and some guy's heart stops?"_

"_Something like that, although not nearly as random. As a soldier…I think you have to believe that."_

"_Why?"_

"_Because if things were predestined, it wouldn't do any good to fight, would it?"_

Quistis. Her face. Her voice. Every day, and every night.

**Stop it. Stop it, damnit. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to think about this shit anymore.**

_Little Quistis, staring defiantly at him as she placed the stone back on his dresser. _

"_I don't believe you."_

**You're dead, goddamnit. You're dead. You're gone.**

_Quistis, standing in Balamb's corridor, standing straight and tall as he broke her heart._

"…_I don't believe you."_

Seifer squeezed his eyes shut, as if he could shut out the memories from the outside in. Damn her. Damn her to hell for haunting him every second of every day, her ghost trailing in his shadow…lingering in the dim filaments of his mind's memory from the shadow of a cold and sunless grave-

"Damn you," he hissed, his words ribboning out onto the wind, lost forever.

_Quistis, sitting on the swings in the dim moonlight, staring up at the stars._

"_I guess I always saw the future as….having a house on the ocean someday for summer leaves. One with a back porch, and a dog that could sit at my feet at night."_

**I don't want to remember her.**

…_Home….take me home._

Tears. The first tears in nearly twenty years, dropping quickly from his eyes to sink their burning hooks into his cheeks as the wind caught them.

_Running through the cornfields….the golden ribbon dancing just ahead of him, laughter bubbling up like faux champagne into the cornflower blue sky…warmth on his cheeks and his back as he raced ahead, his heart as light as the wind-_

Seifer opened his eyes to stare down at the pit of despair beneath him, the swirling tomb of snow and eternal, blissful amnesia.

**Not yet.**

**I still have one more field to see…**

**I have to go there. One last time.**

After a moment he turned away with dry eyes from the cliff, walking up the long hill in the direction that Chu had pointed him, the wind stinging his face with every step.

…

…

…

A/N: Reviews are candy without the calories.


	35. Trials

Author's Note: Thanks to all my online buddies, especially MadHattess and Liz and Jes for keeping me on my toes. Thato all of you who read and review…I'm flattered and greatly appreciative of all your comments. Some of you may also recognize the reference to FF7. Still toying with the idea of a sequel. Who knows? Disclaimer: Several references I make in this chapter aren't mine. The 'future comes soon enough' thing is stolen from Albert Einstein, whose philosophy I'm in love with. I also borrowed some old sword mythology, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. It will be explored more in the next chapter. Also, Quistis and Serabin are ordering absolute nonsense. I can't speak French, nor am I willing to butcher the language in an attempt at food names.

Recommended listening: _Born Yesterday, by Rob Dougan, Paranoid Android, by Radiohead, or even Goodnight Moon by Shivaree…those are the songs I listened to as I wrote it, anyway._

_Welcome to the planet  
Welcome to existence  
Everyone's here  
Everyone's watching you now  
Everybody waits for you now  
What happens next?_

I dare you to move  
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor  
I dare you to move  
Like today never happened  
Today never happened before

Welcome to the fallout  
Welcome to resistance  
The tension is here  
Between who you are and who you could be  
Between how it is and how it should be

Maybe redemption has stories to tell  
maybe forgiveness is right where you fell  
Where can you run to escape from yourself?  
...Salvation is here….

-Switchfoot

Chapter 35

_Her skin was a milky white in the moonlight, a spread of shadow and silk-_

_And cold…so cold. _

_The sheets pooled around her, a white ocean of cloth that draped loosely over her naked form. Her hair was flayed out like a golden fan against the pillowcase. Her mouth was open slightly, and her breaths were deep and even with sleep. _

_He thought of her in the shower, her long limbs tangled with his, the hot water at his back and slick on her lips, and it was all he could do not to wake her just to touch her again._

_But she slept like an angel…and so, he watched her sleep instead._

_He had never watched a woman sleep before. He had been awe-drunk and young and stupid with notions of knights and castles and hearts that would never break, and he had never held still long enough for anything to settle.._

_With her…with Quistis…it had been real. Painful. Jaded and powerful because he knew better…because he knew that she could hurt him._

_He pressed his cheek into the crook of his elbow and studied her through lidded eyes, thinking that watching her sleep was probably the purest moment in his entire fucking sordid existence. _

_He thought of her that sunny day in the slums, her braid bobbing behind her as she played hopscotch with the little girl, a tiger with her claws tucked in…a trained killer open and defenseless like the child she must have been, once-_

_He smiled to remember her standing between Cerberus and the petrified men, eyes glittering in the dog's defense as the men backed away, terrified-_

_He thought of her in the snow, her soul spread out like an offering, her eyes stripped bare of all her soldier-metal and soft…soft like her skin- _

_He could see her there between the snowflakes, her hair caught in the wind and her arms opened, beckoning him home-_

**Home**_…_

_The last word she had uttered. The only thing she'd ever wanted._

"Home."

Seifer blinked beneath the Wendigo hood, his own breath harsh in his ears as he came awake…if indeed he had slept in the last two days at all.

Cold again, and not surrounded by the warmth of her arms. Freezing and lost.

The damned snow was doing funny things to his brain.

He blinked, trying to clear the snow and ice from his eyes as he stumbled up yet another hill. He had long ago lost feeling in his feet, but felt reasonably sure that he was still moving forward. A yellow light was burning through the dismal white drifts…

Light. Fire.

A house?

Impossible.

And yet the shack loomed in the distance, a clapboard vision amidst snow drifts and swirling white gusts. Seifer adjusted the fur wrap over his mouth and nose, fighting the flattened feeling in his lungs as he lunged up the small incline. The dim light was still shining in the distance…lamp light?

He wasn't sure if it was real, or some hypothermia-induced hallucination. He didn't care. He'd die _thinking_ he was warm, at least.

He lunged at the door. Finding it unlocked, he shut it quickly behind him, then tried to catch his breath as he looked around him. The warm air was an unpleasant shock to his frozen lungs, and he nearly choked on his first breath.

Sure enough, an oil lamp was lit in the window, and a fire crackled in a large stone fireplace in a corner of the room. Seifer's entire form longed to unthaw in front of it. He'd lost feeling in his limbs somewhere between Day 2 and 3, and frozen virtually every protruding part of his body. He was pretty sure that if a person could freeze themselves sterile, he'd done it on Day 2.

He pulled off his hood, shaking the snow from his hair onto the fur carpet. The cabin was filled with weapons of every kind and caliber: broadswords and battle axes were hung on the walls and bows hung from the ceiling, swaying in the draft from the door. A huge grindstone stood in the furthest corner of the shop with a large wooden stool beside it. An expansive wooden counter sat in the back, littered with scattered bits of sand paper and metal awls of varying size.

This _had_ to be the place. Or a really good hallucinatory version of it.

_Whatever, it's warm._

"Who's there?" A voice, booming from the back.

Coming up behind the counter through a set of double doors…

…was the biggest man Seifer had ever seen in his life.

The man's face was a myriad of deep scars that carved down from the bottom of his chin to the top of his bald head, the scars pink against the dark, chocolate contrast of his skin. The man's neck was nearly invisible, sunk down into the wide muscles of his arms, muscles that tapered down in veiny bulges to broad, thick fingers. The whites of his eyes seemed almost bloodthirsty.

Seifer unconsciously took a step back.

The giant wore a grey fur wrap that draped over his huge, hulking frame in thick ripples. A small gold locket dangled from his wrist on a thin gold chain. It seemed wildly out of place on a man who could probably smash skulls between his thumb and index finger. Seifer had a picture of him standing on a mountain of skulls, laughing insanely to himself as his cape of puppy-pelts flapped in the wind…

The giant regarded him with a bored disinterest, as if snow-covered travelers burst into his shop all the time. "Yes?" The booming voice seemed to shake the shop walls. "Why are you here?"

With his good arm, Seifer hefted the bag of sword fragments onto the counter, which fell with a heavy clang. The giant studied him for a moment, before poking a large finger underneath the cloth and sifting the fragments. He lifted a thick eyebrow.

"You want this sword reforged."

Seifer wondered whether people routinely climbed the mountain range for any other purpose.

_Naw, I was just taking a leisurely stroll across the frozen tundra of Hell, when I thought hey, why not pick up this broken sword…which by the way is pretty hyne-damned heavy…and lug it up the mountain…just for the hell of it…_

Remembering what Chu had said about being polite, Seifer bit down on his temper (and raging exasperation) and nodded, curtly.

The man picked up what remained of Hyperion's handle, then quickly dropped it back down on the counter as if it had burned him.

Silence.

"This sword has the poison of innocent blood on it," he said, simply. "There are shadows in the metal a mile deep."

Seifer frowned. The hell was this, a sword reading in place of tea leaves?

_Let's see, the fact that your sword is in about a million pieces…you've killed something _**big**_, or you stuck it in a giant light socket…_

The man's gaze was on him. "Tell me why I should reforge such a sword."

_Because I walked fifty freezing miles up to your snow shack, you overgrown fuck. This whole thing was turning into one big horrible mess of a cliché hero movie, and he had the itching suspicion that he was the unlucky protagonist. _

Seifer sincerely hoped the man was not a mind-reader. He didn't relish the idea of a crushed skull.

"Because the last blood on that sword isn't…wasn't…innocent." He replied.

The lumbering giant raised a bushy eyebrow. "There are still shadows in your heart. Desolation."

"Believe it or not, I didn't come here for a psychiatric evaluation." Snapped Seifer irritably. _Was this guy peering at his soul? Fuck. He's as creepy as Chu. If that's possible._

The hulk raised an eyebrow again. "A sword is the purest reflection of a man's heart and his intentions. The shadows in this blade are too thick to see past to the metal. I want to know for what purpose you want it recast. I want to know the purpose for which you intend to wield it."

"Do you ask all your customers these questions?" snarled Seifer, his patience evaporated. "I can't imagine that you have a lot of business up here to begin with. I don't know if you've noticed, but you **do** live at the top of a fucking mountain in the middle of nowhere. It's not like you can be picky about whose money you take."

Dark eyes cut into him. "I don't work for money." The giant sounded insulted by the very idea.

Seifer was at a loss for words. He'd climbed up a snow-filled, rock infested mountain for the past three days and nights, tunneling in the snow to sleep and barely avoiding about six avalanches-

-only to reach the cabin of the second-craziest old man in all of Trabia.

The man leaned forward, towering over Seifer and cutting into him with his black, bottomless eyes. "Stop wasting both of our time, and tell me _why_ I should reforge your sword."

Seifer stubbornly glared back at him. In truth, he couldn't think of one damned reason.

Minutes ticked back, and still the giant stared at him, apparently waiting for an answer. The man's dark eyes were filled with wisdom, and a dark, piercing intensity that made Seifer feel as if he was being looked through…

…it was like being run through with his own sword. Pins and needles. Guilt and judgment.

"Fuck this," he snarled, grabbing the heavy bag of Hyperion's fragments with his good arm and stomping towards the door. He'd eat snow and mystery jerky for another three days, if only to get away from the hermit psycho behind the counter and his weird staring habit. "If Chu wants this sword so fucking bad, he can bring it himself."

"Did you say Chu?" A new note in the man's deep tenor. Curiosity.

Seifer glared at him. "No, I sneezed. What the hell do you care?"

Apparently the two knew each other…probably part of a 'senile prophetic old man network' designed to drive him insane…

_It was working._

"Chu sent you?" repeated the swordsmith.

He rolled his eyes. This guy was thicker than Cactuar shit.

"Yes, the crazy old fuck sent me to you, which I suppose shouldn't be a surprise." He snarled. "Why, though, I have no fucking clue…another exercise in futility, I'm guessing," he added, rolling his eyes. "I personally don't give a shit what happens to this hunk of junk."

_Liar. Then why were you dragging it up the mountain?_

_Shut up, conscience._

"I didn't want it reforged in the first fucking place. He did."

_Well, that much was true._

What the hell would he do with it, anyway? Put it on a wall and wave his crippled arm at it?

The giant looked deep in thought, tapping his thumb against his lips.

This guy was crazy. He'd take his chances with the snow. Rolling his eyes, Seifer once again turned to leave.

The man looked thoughtful. "Bring the sword to me. I shall begin my work."

…

…

…

"Please state your name for the record."

"Dick M. Shitface." Came a murmur.

"Shhhh," came the whispered reply.

"Certainly. Drake M. Sirri."

"Do you swear under the great law of Hyne, that the testimony you are about to give is made of truth and truth alone, with the heavens as witness?"

"Yes."

"My ass." Zell muttered under his breath. Arya, seated on his left, suppressed a smile, even as Serabin, on his right, elbowed him again to be quiet.

Guiyson, with two other lower ranking officers from Galbadia and Esthar on either side, stared out at the room with hard, unblinking grey eyes, his hands folded on the bench in front of him.

Squall studied him. Quistis had said herself that Guiyson, if anyone, was the one that could be swayed.

And assuming the case made it to the Supreme Council….

_Esthar's Representative….Balkin….No balls. Loire's pocket senator. Dead lock for Balamb._

_Galbadia's Representative…Norris…..stuffed to shit with Galbadian bribe money. One for Galbadia._

_Trabia…..Doughston…turned traitor, if Xu's information was correct. Shit._

_Doryn...Timber…Lock for Balamb._

As Squall went down the list, he found their case more and more balanced…and disheartening.

Squall narrowed his eyes. A complete dead-lock across the board, then. They had their work cut out for them.

_First things first. _

He could almost hear Quistis' voice in his head, underlined by her calm and infinite patience. He suppressed a smile.

_Patience_.

Guiyson, as he knew from his previous experience as a field commander, could be swayed in the name of protocol. Guiyson, despite his position, was not a fan of politics, and therefore would react on the most reasonable level concerning Balamb's own Iron Fist tactics. It was only a matter of relaying to Guiyson the risk of national security if the Garden Alliance was destroyed. Guiyson was their only chance…without this case, they had no appeals and were looking at millions of gil in fines and violations, the destruction of the Garden entity itself… and Galbadia would get off scott free.

_No pressure, Leonhart._

Hopefully, thought Squall, the Galbadian senators hadn't managed to buy any sway on the rest of the Supreme Council just yet…Selphie and Rinoa were meeting with Timber's representative today, and bearing an exploding lunch table or General Caraway undergoing a complete change of heart, they would be reasonably certain of at least one senator on their side should the case make it that far.

Squall glanced around the courtroom as everyone took their seats, letting his eyes rove over the opposing side. There were plenty of absentees. Syrus Draishire, formerly Galbadia Garden's second in command, was listed amongst the long-dead on the Esthar battlefield, along with virtually every other commanding officer in the hierarchy (and dead, they were conveniently unavailable for indictment.)

"Balamb…as the submitter of this proposal, you may begin."

Squall stood. "First, your honor, as the Galbadian ticket has all but been cleared by disqualification, I move to recognize Serabin Glyphias as temporary Galbadian Headmaster. Since Drake Sirri has opted to press for the dissolution of Balamb Garden specifically rather than acknowledge his nomination on the Galbadian ticket, he is therefore disqualified. It is under these circumstances and under legal statute 47-B6911 that Balamb Garden moves to elect a Headmaster pro-temp and makes its nomination known"

Harven Glyphias looked at his son and nodded, smiling. The rest of the Galbadian proponents looked smug. Serabin inclined his head and bowed slightly in his father's direction before staring back up at the judge.

Drake Sirri stood. "We have no objection to this nomination, your honor, however irrelevant it may soon become." He said, smiling.

Davin Korbeil stood as well. "Trabia Garden seconds and approves the motion."

Guiyson nodded. "Let the transfer of temporary power be noted on the record. Glyphias, consider yourself sworn in. Authorized ballots will be taken in the official election."

Serabin stood, bowed in acknowledgement, his pale hair dipping in front of his face. He glanced over at his father, his expression unreadable, before returning to his seat.

Guiyson inclined his sleek, grey head towards Balamb's side of the table. "Now, Balamb, if you'll bring your business to the attention of the Council."

Xu stood. "Your honor, Balamb moves to dismiss this case at the level of the Garden Council's own jurisdiction, and moves to have this trial heard by the Supreme Council. The Garden Council cannot, by its own contract, deal with matters of international politics as they apply to matters of international security, and as this case deals with the governments of Esthar, Trabia, and Galbadia, this qualifies our motion to be heard at the national level. Also, as a matter of international politics is being brought to the forefront, action on Balamb Garden for any violation of contract must take secondary precedence."

Sirri stood. "Objection, sirs! Need I remind the court that Balamb Garden, in the last meeting of the Garden Council, had their legal operating license revoked, _suspending_ all legal rights and privileges? And yet, Balamb Garden continued to _honor_ their Estharian contract, going so far as to use the most extensive military force that it possesses!" Sirri began to pace his side of the courtroom, hands gesturing at Squall and the others.

Squall stood. "Use of force in Esthar was under duress of an extreme military situation, and therefore must be taken into account by the Council. What Balamb proposed to honor was initially nothing more than a Type C security class mission-"

Sirri continued, raising his voice. "Irregardless, _under_ this revocation, Balamb has no court rights to mandate such a trial move. I ask that the former entity Balamb Garden stop wasting our time in legal matters with which it no longer has the power to engage in, in the first place-"

Xu stood. "Balamb reserves the right to appeal such measures under Penal Code nine-six-one-A-"

Sirri continued, louder, "-and to accept the fact that this issue is as dead as their former founder, you might-"

"How _dare_ you, you **pompous** fuck!" Xu stood, furious, but Judge Guiyson motioned her back down with a bang of his gavel that landed so hard, the impact sent wood chips flying.

"You are both out of order!" he informed them in a snarl quite unlike Guiyson's normal demeanor.

"Of course, your honor," said Sirri smoothly, not looking the least bit repentant. "My apologies."

"Sit _down_, Headmaster Chang," ordered the older man. The young woman looked ready to spring across the table at any moment and ring Sirri's throat. "Another outburst like that, and I would hold you both in contempt of council, suspending you both of your appointed privileges."

Reluctantly, Xu slid back into her seat, and Squall was glad again for the fact that all weapons had to be checked at the door. Otherwise, Sirri might very likely have the entirety of Xu's ammunition clips embedded in an unfortunate crevice.

"Permission to continue, your honor?" asked Sirri smoothly.

"Permission granted. Watch yourself, Sirri." The warning did not go unnoticed. Squall shot Xu a warning look as well. B. Garden was already on thin ice. They couldn't afford to be held in any more contempt of court than they already were.

Sirri continued to pace the room once again, hands folded behind his back. "I need not remind you the extensive damage that Balamb Garden has caused over the past year alone, creating millions of gil in damage to the IGCS as well as to several Estharian building structures. Balamb Garden not only ignored but _violated_ this license revocation. I move to have Balamb Garden's legal rights stripped as castigation for this outrageous disregard for law and authority."

The mayor of Tromedia chose that moment to stand. "As an official responsible for my city and its people, I find that threat that the Garden entity far outweighs any benefits that it has to offer. In the name of national security, I demand that at the _very_ least, _Balamb_ Garden is not allowed to push this trial to the Supreme Council, and that their military operating license be revoked permanently. As it stands, Balamb is an unstable military faction that represents international security risks."

"Ungrateful shithead," muttered Zell from the back. Serabin and Arya both elbowed him at the same time.

Guiyson ignored the murmur and looked pointedly irritated. "Have all the arguments been heard?"

"Balamb rests." Said Xu, still looking furious.

"As does the people of Galbadia, your honor," added Sirri, bowing.

Guiyson leaned over and, in turn, whispered something into the ear of each of the men sitting beside him, and the three disappeared into the chambers in the corner.

The bailiff stood. "The court will entertain a short recess," he announced, then moved to stand in front of the judge's chambers.

Xu glared over at the opposing side of the room, where Drake Sirri was shooting her a smug look.

"Keep it up, Sirri," she hissed, "And I'll have your ass so loaded with ammunition that you'll need to _disengage_ to take a shit."

"Easy, Xu," said Squall, putting a hand on his comrade's tense shoulder.

"Yes, easy Xu," drawled Sirri. "You're on thin ice as it is, aren't you? That sounded like you were threatening a diplomat."

"By diplomat, do you mean subversive tactician or political weasel?" snarled Squall, as he tried unsuccessfully to get Xu to sit back down.

"I suppose it's your _position_ that Nida was an independent loose cannon?" snarled Xu.

Sirri's smile was positively oiled. "A most unfortunate incident, wasn't it? Such a pity Cid Kramer couldn't be here today…he was like a father to you poor orphans, wasn't he? With Daddy gone, who's going to wipe your asses, hm?"

It was Squall who lunged forward this time, and it took all Xu had to jerk him back. Squall glowered. "I'll kill him…" he muttered.

"Step down, Leonhart," she hissed. "This is what the bastard wants."

Just then, the door to the judge's chambers opened, and Guiyson and the other two judges walked out, taking their seats at the long bench. The courtroom fell silent.

Guiyson stood. "The Garden Council has reached a decision." He announced. Everyone took their seats.

"Drake Sirri, although you do make a valid point concerning Balamb Garden's violation of its mandated rights suspension, you also bring an indiscretion to the table that we cannot ignore. The Garden Council cannot reprimand Balamb Garden as an existing entity as punishment for the violation of their suspension and be classified as a non-entity as you demand to prevent their petition to the higher council. Since you fail to specify which action takes precedence, the Council can and will do neither."

Drake Sirri looked ready to explode.

"Balamb Garden, entity or not, makes a valid point as well. This case is beyond the jurisdiction of the Garden Council, in dealing with entities such as city governments as both violators of law and benefactors of military entities. It is under this 3-0 decision that we rule in favor of Balamb Garden. The case will be heard by the Supreme Council approximately two months and twenty-five days from now, at the Palliate Courthouse in Esthar. Should Balamb Garden regain operational status, it _will_ be reprimanded for its breach in contract. Make no mistake of that, Commander Leonhart. Galbadia, I suggest you make your case as well."

Guiyson's gavel-bang was especially dismissive, and the judge fixed a hard look at Sirri as he got up and left the room.

Xu and Squall exchanged a look.

"Well, there goes our first battle," sighed Squall.

Xu glanced behind her, where Sirri was stalking out the doors, guards in tow. "Yeah, but the war isn't over," she muttered. "Not by a long shot."

Squall nodded. "Let's get back and see how the others are doing."

A small figure cut through the crowd, nearly crashing into Xu. Observing the blue coat and the wings embroidered on his arm, Squall recognized him as an Estharian post-boy.

"Commander Leonhart," panted the young man. "A message for you."

Squall took the message, frowning. The paper was in the form of a telegraph, although it bore a strange, red wax seal that he had never seen in his life. "Who is this from?"

The messenger shook his head. "I'm not sure, sir. But the office told me that it's priority one, so I rushed it here to you, sir."

"Fine." Squall opened the letter, still frowning. It was hastily scribbled in an archaic writing. Squall's gaze flitted over the words.

A frown. "This can't be true."

Xu frowned. "What is it, Leonhart?"

"This letter…" muttered Squall. "It's impossible."

_The grey wolf sleeps in Trabia, to awake when the snow retreats. Prepare accordingly, Lion of Balamb._

_-O_

… … … … … … … … … ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…

…

…

Quistis glanced out the window from her perch on the hospital bed, her legs dangling off the side. The single window of the room provided her with an excellent view of the parking lot, which was sparsely populated by a few tenacious trees. The view was drab and disheartening.

She would finally leave the room today, and go to stay with the others at the Esthar Inn until the fate of Garden was decided. To say she was looking forward to getting out was an understatement. The white-walls of the hospital were making her restless.

"Quistis?"

She snapped her head around to look at the doorway, where a familiar form was leaning. Rinoa.

She had seen Rinoa a few times alone since she had awoken, but mostly, she had only visited with Squall. Her last clear memory of Rinoa before her near-death had been after the shooting in Esthar, when she had been carrying the seizing young woman into the medbay. The young sorceress looked much better now, although there were still dark bags beneath her eyes, which indicated a gross lack of sleep. Quistis could relate.

"Come in, Rinoa. Have you heard anything from Squall about the trial?"

"Not yet." She replied, walking slowly into the room. "Do you have a moment?"

"Sure," said Quistis, frowning, not liking the unusually serious tone in her friend's voice. "Kadowaki won't be ready to see me for awhile, and I can't leave until she discharges me officially. Have a seat."

Rinoa smiled faintly, taking a seat next to Quistis on the edge of the bed. "You must be looking forward to being out of the hospital."

Quistis stretched, letting out a contented sigh as the kinks in her spine released themselves with a satisfying snap. "Quite. Any longer, and I think they'd have to commit me here permanently…as a mental patient."

Rinoa threaded her fingers through her hair, shifting on the mattress. "I wanted to thank you for taking care of me before…after…the _incident_ in Esthar. I'm sorry for…how I must have been." The girl bowed her dark head, her hair obscuring most of her face.

"It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry I couldn't…do more for you." Said Quistis, feeling uncomfortable at the turn the conversation was taking. She remembered that time all too well. Cid, pale as death on the cot…Xu, sobbing, Squall, shaken….

And Rinoa…

…_crazy_.

"Are you…feeling better now?"

Rinoa didn't answer, and an uncomfortable silence passed between the two women. Finally, she looked up. "I wanted you to be the first to know. Squall and I are engaged." She held up her hand, where a rather large diamond glittered from its perch on her small finger. It was a square cut perched atop a thin platinum band, and it caught the light in a brilliant sunburst of color.

Genuine happiness bubbled in Quistis' chest, underlined by another emotion she couldn't place but immediately dismissed. Leaning forward, she placed her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Rinoa, that's wonderful! Congratulations."

"Yes." Replied Rinoa, but there was no happy lilt in her voice, none of the jubilance that Quistis expected. "Squall and I had hoped you would be our matron of honor. You're very important to him and me, you know, even if it's…difficult for Squall to say."

Surprised, Quistis managed a small smile. "I'd be honored to."

Without lifting her head, Rinoa placed her hand over Quistis's and giving it a small squeeze. "I need to ask you something else, Quistis."

"Sure, anything."

And suddenly, the pressure of Rinoa's hand on hers became painful. A bolt traveled up her arm from the contact, the nerves in her arms twitching as if conducting a spell. Quistis sucked in a breath, wincing, but she did not try to withdraw her hand.

There was a pressure in her temples now, too, and Quistis blinked away the blackness that was now gathering in her eyes.

"What are you _doing_-" hissed Quistis between her teeth, but Rinoa did not answer, only gripped her hand harder. Suddenly, Rinoa's small strength seemed enough to snap her bones in two, and her grip was burning.

Rinoa's voice…**in her mind. **And all at once, there was a harsh, sucking sensation, like a vacuum in her temple, as if she was being slammed back into her own mind, pressed into a corner to make room for the pressure-

_I have to give you this…_

"Stop it!" hissed Quistis, but Rinoa only shook her head. Quistis felt a heavy pressure in her temples then, and her vision was blotting, turning into a time and a place that had nothing to do with the hospital room.

_A field. A green field filled with flowers_.

Someone speaking.

An image poured forth of the three Gardens.

But they were…burning. Falling from the sky in brilliant streaks of fire.

Falling…falling…

Screaming….darkness.

Death.

"I have to show you, Quistis…you have to see….I have to give you this…"

_And she was walking through it, no, not through it, but into it-_

"Forgive me."

"Rinoa, _stop it_-"

The field disappeared.

She was standing in a sea of light, and darkness was all around her-

She was reaching out, but Rinoa was turning away…

Startled, Quistis tried to withdraw her hand, to break the vision, but Rinoa only gripped it harder. She leaned in, their foreheads touching, and Quistis stared into Rinoa's dark eyes, so close-

_My friend. My sister. You must protect him. You must protect them all._

_Protect who? Protect Squall? Our friends?_

_Yes. We both do._

_Why? What's going to happen?_

Quistis opened her eyes, only to stare directly into Rinoa's dark irises. The flower field again, the sweet perfume in her nostrils and Rinoa's hands in hers, and suddenly, her lips on hers, soft like rose petals, and sweet, and burning-

**She could not move.**

"My sister."

**Quod incepimus conficiemus** ….

Rinoa's eyes, tormented…her words senseless and torn from her throat….

**Tu fui… **

**Ego eris…**

And suddenly they were in the hospital room again. There were no flowers, no voices, just her friend and the sterile hospital sheets. Quistis touched her hand to her lips, bewildered. Her hand no longer hurt.

Rinoa blinked, and just as quickly, the dark in her gaze was gone, replaced by the kind and gentle look of her friend.

"You don't understand now, Quistis. But you will." Said the young sorceress quietly.

Quistis frowned, the images still lingering in her mind. "What did you show me?"

_What did you do to me?_

_Protect him. Protect them._

Tears brimmed in Rinoa's dark eyes. "_Promise_ me."

Quistis blinked at her.

_I don't know what I'm promising you, but if it will ease the pain in your eyes…_

"I promise," she managed.

Rinoa squeezed her hand, then let it go. "Thank you," she whispered. Slowly, she got to her feet, and managed a smile, but it was a ghost of her former exuberance. "I have to go now. Squall will be back soon." She said, bowing her head. "I'm so happy… that you'll be my maid of honor, Quistis."

Quistis watched Rinoa's form slip from the doorway. "So am I."

A strange feeling overcame Quistis then…like a rush of cold water in her breast. It was the same force that had weighted down her heart in her dreams of Cid…a nameless thing that had prevented her from going in the water…a foreign pressure inside her chest.

_You must watch out for them…._

_Protect him. Protect _**them**_…_

Quistis stared silently after her friend. So many promises…none of them made any sense.

Quistis balled her hands as she got to her feet, forcing the thoughts from her mind.

**Tu fui, ego eris…**

_She would not think of the future. It would come soon enough._

…

…

…

Seifer glared suspiciously around the room, his face reflected back at him in every silver face of the weapons that were bolted to the walls. He'd been left to dress in front of the fire, alone. However, his own movement in the metal disturbed him, made him search for shadows in a room that held only steel and fire. He eventually turned his eyes to the floor, away from his reflection. The image he had liked to gaze at so often when he was younger now disgusted him.

The lights had been dimmed, some rags haphazardly tossed into a corner in a pile. Seifer had the lingering suspicion that he'd be sleeping there tonight. Oh, well. Anything was better than tunneling in a snowdrift, wedged between two layers of cold and winding in and out of consciousness. The howl of the wind had nearly driven him insane at night.

He leaned over to put on the simple pair of pants at least ten sizes too big, winding a rope belt around his waist and securing the baggy material around his hips. It was warm and clean, anyway.

Movement again, and he glanced up. The silver face of a large mirror glittered in the half-dark, reflecting his form back at him yet again. He glared at it, and his reflection sneered back at him.

_Coward_, he mouthed at himself. Aside from the mimicry, the silence and his silver twin had no answer.

He remembered Adel's twisted mind, the laughter in his ears when she told him to look at himself. His real self. He had been twisted…disfigured. He had been as dark and ugly as she.

Staring into the reflection of the swords and sighing, he stretched out his arms to witness for the first time the damage Adel had done to him. A scar on his side where Glyphias had sliced him, a chunk missing on his shoulder where Garek's bullet had grazed him. His body looked like a flesh puzzle, one that was stitched badly back together. The cabin he had shared with Chu had not had any mirrors, and he doubted he would have wanted to see himself in the early weeks anyway. The pain in his back had been so bad the first week he had clawed at his own face in torrents of fever and fatigue, and his right eye had been swollen shut for the better part of a week from his battle with Chu and the stick, not to mention the cuts and bruises he'd woken up with. The pain was getting familiar, and distant, like an unwelcome friend that stayed too long.

He gazed at the reflection to find that the dim light of the swordsmith's shop was no kinder to him than the dormitory lights of Balamb had been, a year a go, a lifetime ago.

_Not that he had been looking for mercy._

He was thin…gaunt. His hair was too long again, tied back with a piece of sinew from Hyne-knew what unfortunate animal Chu had gotten ahold of. A myriad of scars snaked down his arms and torso, but those were fading. The scar on his back would be the worst…the one where Adel had sliced him. Chu had stitched him back together. Narrowing his eyes, he turned, and his eyes widened at what he saw.

"The _fuck_…"

It was a _tattoo_.

A cross that appeared to be such a dark red it was nearly black….a dark, black, bloody color…

_Chu holding his wrist over a bowl, the light glinting off the knife in painful points…_

Seifer blinked. Impossible. Hallucinations.

The tip of the cross stretched from the tip of his tailbone up to the top of his neck, the dark points rigid and defined. The arms of the cross spread across to the very edge of his shoulders, the points ending just after the jutting slopes of the shoulder blades.

_A cross. He drew a fucking cross on me._

Scowling, Seifer rubbed at the ink, digging his fingers into his flesh.

Yep. Permanent.

**An ugly face over him, a piece of thread between his teeth. Fire on his back, a roaring pain that held his entire body taut.**

**Screaming. Praying to die. Someone holding a cup to his lips, easing something terrible, something thick and bitter down his throat. Someone with a knife, and a new burning in his back. His hands were tied down to brass posts, the ropes biting into his wrists. Cold fire.**

**Cold…so cold.**

**A voice.**

**Bowl of blood….**

**Firia Equis. The mark of your redemption…**

Seifer blinked.

Dreams. Hallucinations. Reality. All seemed to knit together with the same kind of distant fever. What the hell was real anymore?

"Ah. Chu gave you _Firia Equis_, I see."

Seifer spun from the mirror, fists clenched. "Gave me _what_, exactly, besides draw on me with blood and spit?"

The swordsmith rolled his eyes, addressing the ceiling. "Firia Equis. Oy, Chu, ab asino lanam."

_Chu, wool from an ass is impossible._

Seifer glared at him. "I understand the old tongue, you know."

The giant ignored him. "Tomorrow, I want all the crates on this side of the room moved to the back. Also, all of these swords need sharpening and polishing."

"You have to be kidding me."

"Do I look like a man that jokes around to you?"

Seifer raised an eyebrow. Truthfully, the swordsmith didn't look like he did anything other than bash skulls in for a living. Instead of saying what was on his mind, which was decidedly a bad idea when trapped on a frozen mountain with a crazy giant, Seifer shifted his weight. "So, let me get this straight. You want me to take all of these boxes here-" he gestured to a wall of heavy-looking crates. "And move them back there." He moved his hand over to gesture at the presumed back wall.

"If you wish to eat, you'll work," replied the giant, hefting Hyperion's fragments over his shoulder as if it were a sack of feathers. "What is your name?"

"What would you like it to be?" replied Seifer snidely, before he could stop himself.

Instead of crushing his skull as Seifer expected, the giant threw back his head and laughed, a booming sound that shook the cabin walls. "Ah yes, spirit. Use it to move the boxes."

Seifer glared after him.

The giant turned in the doorway. "Ah yes, before I forget. This little ring of yours shall be my collateral. Make sure you won't go running off at the first sign of sweat," he announced, holding the gold circlet up to the light.

_His mother's ring._

"Where the fuck did you get that?" snapped Seifer.

"In the pitiful rags you called clothing," sneered the larger man.

Seifer leapt to his feet. "Give it **back**."

The man held it up to the light. "Worthless piece of metal, in terms of money. Not even pure. Still, it will do-"

Snarling, Seifer lunged at him. The oaf spun him without dropping the bag of sword fragments and grabbed him by his bad arm, spinning him. Seifer choked back a cy as the man wrenched his injured arm behind him, setting every bone on the verge of snapping.

The giant's voice was calm in his ears. "What is your name?"

"_Fuck_ you." Gasped Seifer, sucking in a pained breath as the swordsmith increased the impossible pressure.

"I asked for your **name**, not your profanity."

Indignity, pain, and helplessness was tapering down his temper, soothing his body into a pathetic, tired acceptance. He was tired of being angry…tired of fighting.

Tired of losing.

"Seifer Almasy," he muttered.

_Tired._

_So this was how it felt to be broken..._

"Seifer Almasy, then." Spoke the man in a calm voice.

"Give me the fucking ring back." Growled Seifer, still straining against the man's grip.

"Or you will do what? Violence is always the first tool of the weak. Weak men cannot make demands." Replied the swordsmith. "When you are strong enough, you may ask, and you will receive it. But not before."

Abruptly, the giant released him, and Seifer stumbled forward before whirling on the man, eyes flashing.

He had never felt more like a child…or more angry in his life.

The man shook his head, chuckling. "I forget what it's like to be young." Shifting the sword fragments on his back, the giant bowed his head slightly. "My name is Masa, Seifer Almasy. We shall begin our work tomorrow."

Bathed in firelight and humiliation, Seifer sunk to his knees, letting his crippled arm pour to the ground in front of him. He stared hard into the fire, glaring into the flames as the burning anger was slowly replaced with determination. Something in the man's calm, proud countenance was oddly familiar.

For an instant, staring into the flames, he could almost see her against a Balamb sunset, the wind in her hair and laughter in her eyes.

"Quistis." He whispered aloud, to no one.

Wherever she was now, he hoped that she was smiling.

…

…

…

**Esthar Hospital, Esthar**

"Blood pressure 104 over 70."

The hospital lights were especially bright as Quistis opened her eyes to gaze at the ceiling tiles, ignoring the processes being conducted around her. Rinoa's words were still floating around in her head, disjointed and disconcerting despite her attempts to dismiss them.

A whoosh of air filled the space around her arm as Kadowaki loosened the cuff and set it on the table. "Give me your wrist."

Quistis obediently held out her arm palm up, looking at the ceiling again more to avoid looking at the 500 stitches that ran from wrist to armpit than to look at what was about to be done to her. She supposed that she would be gazing at the ceiling awhile, as it was the same on her other arm. "Pulse is 78," announced Kadowaki, after a minute had passed. "Vitals are good."

Due to her Estharian connections, Kadowaki had managed to secure a small room at Esthar memorial treat Balamb soldiers. Kadowaki claimed it was to reduce costs, although President Loire had assured them all that all Balamb medical bills would be covered in thanks to its aid. Quistis had the suspicion it that Kadowaki simply wanted to treat her 'brood' herself…or what remained of it. Of the roughly 350 junior classman, 100 personnel, and the 80 SeeDs, about 250 soldiers and crew total now remained.

_So many graves…_

_So many lost…_

And they would need to recruit again. More young minds, more almost-children sculpted into killers, ordered to murder, spy, and scout the world and forsake their childhoods. Nida's words came back to her, then, and she understood them a little. But she could not afford to be an idealist. She could no longer align her mind with the hopeful and the pure- there were some people that were born to enjoy peace, and others that were born to die for it. She wondered what Nida though now, from his cell in the D-District prison, under 24 hour surveillance by both a representative from Balamb and from Trabia to ensure that Galbadia did not dispatch him before his official statement could be taken. So far, Nida wasn't talking.

Quistis didn't bother to flinch as Kadowaki drew a customary blood sample for the usual blood work. There had been so many needles sticking in her since she woke up that she had lost both count and fear of the process.

Kadowaki flicked the vial as she brought it up, squinting at the play of light on the liquid as she added another base component to it. "Are you junctioned?" asked Kadowaki sharply.

Quistis rolled her eyes. "Nothing that isn't already fused to my veins, no."

_Protect, Holy, maybe one Curaga_….she couldn't recall what the trainee had left on her. Esthar's battleground remained a merciful blur, for the most part.

For the most part.

She could recall shards of it…of the sickening pain, of people shouting at her, and of the terrible, helpless feeling of being pulled up and under, tossed in a violent current, the magic stringing through her veins rolling her over and over.

Quistis eased herself forward on the cot, the simple action making her feel exhausted and sluggish. Would that feeling ever fade?

She didn't dare mention to Kadowaki that days earlier, she had tried to junction a simple ice spell, only to spend the next four hours throwing up with ice packs duct-taped to both her arms. Quistis didn't feel like another lecture.

The doctor was still watching her, hands on hips.

Quistis sighed. "Aren't you going to give me the 'I told you so' lecture?"

It was the first time that Quistis and the doctor were alone, since Quistis was usually surrounded by a barrage of medical doctors and staff nurses, not to mention the stationary guard that Squall insisted sit outside her door since Nida had attempted to kill her. The guard turned out to be Arson, a former student of hers. They played Triple Triad, occiasionally.

Kadowaki peered over her glasses to give Quistis a very pointed parental look as she picked up a clipboard and marked something done. "Would it do any good?"

Quistis smiled, she couldn't help it. "You know me too well, Dr. Kadowaki."

But Kadowaki's expression remained stern. "You're not going to resign from active duty, are you, regardless of what I mark on this clipboard?"

Quistis held her gaze. "You know the answer to that. Xu won't enforce it, anyway."

_I made a promise…I promised to go back…to make sure that Garden survived all this…_

Kadowaki narrowed her eyes. "Your arms are split to bloody hell, Ms. Trepe. You're a non-caster/non-junctioned entity now, barely the ability of a junior classman. You won't be placed on any Class A missions. You know that."

"That I'm a non-casting entity doesn't rule out my ability to cast berserk-level limits or to facilitate low grade Blue Magic yet, which is classified as _supplementary_ type-A class-"

"Are you _crazy_?" shouted the doctor. "Blue magic is on par with type-A protect magic. If you remember, that's the very same magic you blew yourself up-"

Quistis rolled her eyes. "_**I**_ didn't blow myself up. The tank-"

"And you were a damned fool for staring it down!" Kadowaki slammed her board onto the counter, causing Quistis to jump. "You were a damned fool for summoning that spell with as sick as you were!"

"Dr-"

"I'm too old to be sewing children back together! I _told_ you not to cast anything, you stupid girl!" Tears were slipping down the older woman's face. The stress of the past few weeks had finally bubbled over, and the doctor's normally unbreakable countenance was shattered.

"And Cid Kramer! Garden! Nothing I could do…fell apart…"

_Falling apart._

Quistis was so very tired of hearing those words…they fell upon her shoulders like concrete curtains…

"There was nothing anyone could-" began Quistis. The same tired sentence. Tired words with no real meaning or comfort for anybody. She couldn't finish it.

Suddenly Kadowaki lunged at her, crushing her in her small arms.

"So many…glad you're….all right." The doctor murmured after a few bone-crushing moments, before wiping hastily at her eyes and releasing her. Between Kadowaki, Rinoa, Squall and the others, Quistis was beginning to feel like a human stress cushion lately. "If Seifer and the others hadn't been there…"

"Seifer?" asked Quistis, frowning.

"Yes," replied Kadowaki, blowing her nose into a strip of gauze. "Seifer carried you back to the Garden after Esthar. He kept siphoning the poisoning off of you…onto himself. Made himself sick and…." Kadowaki was mumbling into the gauze strip now as she blew her nose again. "…stayed by your side for hours..."

…_stayed by your side…_

Quistis simply sat on the cot, stunned for a few moments, before she gingerly scooted forward, finally allowing herself to stare at the long, red rows of stretches that ran angry lengths up her arms.

Kadowaki, meanwhile, seemed to have collected herself again. "You're insanely lucky to be alive, Quistis. There had been no recorded case previous to yours in which a human being survived the final stages of mag-poisoning. Your condition is unheard of…and quite possibly unstable. You must take every caution to preserve your health. I must recommend, therefore, that henceforth you stop casting all Type Alpha, Beta, and Gamma type spell variants, all berserk-limits, all blue-"

Kadowaki's words ran together. The lecture was nothing that Quistis hadn't expected.

The doctor took a few long breaths, staring down at her hands for a moment, and Quistis found herself tuning back in."-something else you need to know, Quistis. Your condition has most likely rendered you sterile. I'm going to recommend that you stop the monthly injections for safety reasons. The less chemicals in your body, the better. We can't have any loose agents reacting, especially not now-"

_No children._

The thought stung, but only a little. Children had always seemed light years away to Quistis, on par with sprouting wings and flying to the moon. Those dreams belonged to other people. Normal people with wedding rings and a white picket fence. Fairy tale castles and knights on white horses belonged to other people…better people. But now the dream…even the borrowed dream was gone.

She stared at her open palm, flexing the fingers. The movement was slow, almost perfunctory. It seemed separate from her.

_Was there anything human left within her? Or had her body now simply converted all its grief to the unfeeling mechanisms of the mercenary?_

_Sterile…_

_Dead from the inside._

She'd lost so much lately that her chest had begun to feel like a landslide had lodged itself inside it, each slip a dying ebb that faded to an empty reverberations in the dark.

_Barren. Damaged. Crippled. _

_Hollow._

Not like Seifer. No. Seifer was just…dead.

_Who was the luckier or the two? The one whose dreams and nightmares had ended, or the one that woke up to them every day?_

Tears burning in her eyes again. Disgusted, she wiped them away and took a deep breath.

_Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop it._

"Now, let's take out those stitches out, shall we?" The doctor's voice was pointedly cheery.

Quistis looked up at the doctor and nodded before turning away as the doctor took her wrist. She had no wish to watch the process, to stare that the ugly scars the stitches would leave behind. The good doctor, seemingly out of comforting words to say, worked in silence.

_It was a fitting melody_, she thought absently.

The silence could keep the time of to each empty ache of her heart.

…

…

…

………………………………

There were days, in the beginning, that she thought the silence would drive her mad. There was not even the sound of expectation in the soft, lonely hammers of her heart to quell the noiseless ache. There were pictures to dust, the framed faces peering back at her with preserved smiles. Canned happiness. That was what kept her in the early days.

But now, a sea of faces stared out at her from the screen door, infused with metal and wire, eyes lost and grappling for structure. Barnicles in a turbid ocean, desperate for substrate. Two children…so like the ones she had raised so long ago. One boy, and one girl. Her children. Her new children.

Daenen and Celes. Their names filled the dusty ache in her throat. Their voices would fill the silence of the lonely rooms.

Night had fallen upon the seaside cottage. She occupied herself with walking from room to room, checking in the darkness for the sleeping forms of the children…listening for the even breath of sleep. They had exhausted themselves on the beach today, wandering in the surf. They had never seen the ocean before.

Sighing, she sat in front of the fire, glancing between the crackling blaze and the cold shadows of twilight, stirring old memories as she stirred the coals.

In the dark of Ultimecia's torrid mind, she had walked free through the halls of the sorceress' memory. Certain memories held more prominence than others. While there, she had memorized the Psalms of _Ios Toren_s, the scribblings of madmen who sifted through stars and sand to see the future eons ago. The psalms had haunted her from the very day she had returned to herself, and she muttered them, now, in the silence of the room.

_When the steel phoenix rises_

_The final curtain will rise_

_The pieces will unite_

_And the angel will fall_

_Two knights will ride_

_Wolf and lion, side by side_

_Three falling stars _

_Will mark the beginning of the end_

_And the shadows will be sealed_

_This is the last song. _

_The last dream. _

_The future past_

_Will come to pass_

_As the dreamers have forseen._

_The succession will end_

_When all is one_

_The sun will rise_

_In the blood of the fated children…_

The Liberi Fatali. The fated children.

_The blessed children._

_The _**cursed**_ children._

…………………. . . . .

. …. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

"Who is she?"

Seifer looked up from his position in front of the fire, where he was still polishing Masa's massive collection of blades. The task seemed never-ending, and the effort of moving his arm was beginning to spread the numbness across his entire body instead of it being concentrated in only one limb. There was blood mixed in the wiping rag now, as he'd slipped nearly a dozen times and sliced open his palm in as many places. He didn't relish sleeping in the snow anymore, however, so he kept wiping.

"Who?" asked Seifer darkly, narrowing his eyes at the man's shadow as it poured and flickered on the floorboards in front of the fire.

"The woman to whom that ring belongs."

"She's dead." Replied Seifer curtly. "What do you care?"

"You confuse curiosity with sympathy, I think."

_Familiar lines._

Seifer turned his gaze back to the blade. "It was my mother's," he muttered.

"And the other?"

"The other _what_?" he snapped, throwing down the rag in exasperation. For a damned recluse, the man was awfully talkative.

"The person that occupies your thoughts these long nights? You are miles away."

Seifer narrowed his eyes. He'd had enough of creepy old man and there introspective musings to last a lifetime.

"Why do you want to know?" he muttered, snatching up the rag again.

Masa eased his large frame down in front of the fire, the light flickering across his dark face. "When I fashion a sword, I also fashion a story. I cannot make a sword for a shadow."

"So make something up," snarled Seifer, scrubbing harder at the sword.

The swordsmith raised an eyebrow. "This process can take as long as you'd like it to, Seifer Almasy. Do you relish growing old here?"

"Fine. Just assume that everyone I ever cared about is dead or hates my guts. Make a sword out of that."

Masa shook his head. "Which is the person I asked of?"

Seifer picked up the rag again, scrubbing hard on the blade despite the sharp pain in his hand. _Both, probably_. "She's dead."

"Why?"

"Does being an overgrown hermit turn you into some sort of perverse busybody?" Seifer retorted. "I killed her."

"How?"

"_..don't act like you don't feel anything. Don't act like it didn't mean anything to you…"_

"…_funny. That's what they all say."_

_Watching as her bravery shattered, as her eyes filled with tears as she turned away…_

_Because of me…she died _**because of me…**

Seifer glared down at the blade, glowering at the sword's reflection. "The last thing I ever said to her…"

_I told her she was nothing to me and she turned around and threw her life away-_

…_and she smiled at me while she died in my arms…_

"But you did love her."

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

_With every beat of my ugly, crippled heart…yeah, I loved her. She was the only fucking decent thing in my life._

"Did you tell her?"

Seifer's hand stilled. "No," he replied, forcing the sarcasm into his voice. "She's dead. She threw her life away in one of those heroic moments of bullshit you old timers get all crusty over."

"A brave woman." Mused Masa.

"Yeah, sure." He scrubbed harder, trying to blot out his own reflection.

_Blonde hair, slim figure braced against the curved platform's shattered shields as the golden bullet casings rained down at booted feet…_

_The tank's head cocking back, the explosion deafening as he ran forward-_

His hand slipped, once again embedding itself on the sword's edge.

"Fuck!" he swore, jumping to his feet. He glared up at the swordsmith, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. "Have you got enough misery for the fucking sword now?"

Masa got slowly to his feet, eyes somber. "We are finished for today. You may wash up for supper now."

The doors closed behind him, and Seifer threw the bloody sword across the room.

Breathing hard, he looked down at his bloody hand. Instead of the infuriating numbness, there was now a steady and stinging throb, which beat in time to the blood in his ears.

Narrowing his eyes, he stalked forward, forcing his throbbing hand to curl around the handle of the blade.

_Pick it up. Do it._

Gritting his teeth, he swung the sword forward, biting down hard on his lip to muffle the cry of pain that rushed from his gut as the pain jerked up his arm.

Breath hissing out his teeth, he swung it back, blood dripping down his chin as his teeth cut through his lip.

Bracing his feet, he took another swipe, but the pain ripped through his entire body this time, and the sword clattered once more to the floor.

The sword's silver face glared mockingly up at him.

_Weak._

Everyone I ever loved is gone. I couldn't save them…I couldn't save any of them, could only sit by with a sense of impotent rage and resignation as everything passed by….

_Just like my _**fucking**_ father-_

He stared with loathing at his crippled arm, at the tremoring flex of fingers, and slow and stuttering muscle contractions-

His father melded to the rotting recliner, a bottle of beer in hand, his stump resting feebly against the imitation leather, a pool of beer and spit collecting in the corners of his mouth even as the drunken, crazy sheen pooled in his eyes-

**I am my father. I am my weak and worthless father-**

_His mother, slipping through his fingers-_

_Quistis, broken and bloody, fading in his arms-_

_Fujin, her body nearly cut in half, her grip weakening in his-_

_And he had done nothing- he had let them slip through his fingers-_

"_You gave up! You just fucking gave up!"_

He turned in the room, which was growing hot and suffocating. Dizzy. He needed to get the hell out of there-

Out in to the snow, the cold air stinging his exposed skin, he fell to his knees, a scream of rage and frustration echoing in the cold mountain air, tremoring out into the cold night and fading into nothing.

Moonlight bathed the cross on his back, the dark mark on his skin reflecting in the moon's pale gloss and he tore at the snow as if it were a living thing until the rage had melted from his limbs and he sagged, exhausted, hunched over the ground.

_I couldn't save you, I'm sorry-_

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

**Esthar Inn, Esthar**

………………………………………………………………………

The Estharian Inn was a high-class hotel with an attached 5-star restaurant. It had been one of the buildings least damaged in the Battle of Esthar, and was quickly repaired. Marble floors shone in the light of several tastefully placed crystal-chandeliers, and the high ceilings conducted the beautiful, clear notes of a grand piano. Waiters bustled elegantly from table to table like over-dressed penguins, serving silver platters and champagne.

Quistis herself felt like a fish out of water, gaping wordlessly at the high-priced elegance around her. Military strategy, mission arsenal planning, and courtroom appearances she could handle: 5 forks was a bit much.

Serabin, however, seemed quite at home, and Quistis was reminded of Serabin's more…_wealthy_ background as he effortlessly steered the waiter into a window table and an expensive bottle of wine.

"Very good, Mr. Glyphias." The waiter bowed, and retreated to the kitchens, returning with a bottle of wine that managed to _sound_ expensive when poured.

"To our future success in the Supreme Council," announced Serabin, raising his glass above the candlelight and smiling across the table.

"_Mr. Glyphias_?" Quistis raised an eyebrow, smiling as their glasses clinked together. "You've brought more than a few women here, haven't you?"

"Perhaps. But you're by far the most stunning."

Quistis laughed and took a sip of champagne. "Well played."

"It is both a strategy and the truth." Serabin smiled. "Really, Quistis. You look beautiful this evening, if I may say so."

"No. I mean, yes. Thank you." Quistis could feel a blush rising in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the champagne.

_It's the champagne._

_You've only had one sip, you fool_, snarled Quistis to herself.

The dress, a sleeveless powder blue silk that clung a little too appealingly to her figure, had been all Rinoa's doing. In fact, thought Quistis, gritting her teeth, none of this was her fault. A wrap made of a floaty blue and white silk blend wound between her arms, covering very little skin but concealing the scars on her arms, for the most part. She had nearly twisted her ankle walking up the steps in the strappy heels, running into Serabin and nearly knocking them both over, and she resisted the urge to put poison in Xu's morning coffee for lending them to her. Selphie had loaned Quistis her pearl jewelry, a white silk ribbon with a teardrop shaped pearl with matching earrings. Loaned was perhaps an understatement- Selphie had chased her down and snapped it on her.

"You look like the Queen of Atlantis!" called Xu after her, as Rinoa and Selphie giggled. Quistis had replied with a single finger.

Quistis shifted in her seat. She didn't feel like the Queen of Atlantis. She felt like a fool. She was painfully conscious of the scars that marred her arms, the marks created by magic that no magic could cure. The rest of the scars had faded or would fade, by and by. The gash on her skull and the legions on her face procured from the shrapnel had been healed by Kadowaki when the last states of mag poisoning had faded from her body. Quistis had spared herself one glance in the mirror and barely recognized the girl staring back at her. It was disconcerting. This whole damned thing was disconcerting.

_This date…_

_It's not a date!_

"Shut up." She hissed.

"Is something wrong?"

Quistis glanced across the table, and realized two things: one, that she was talking to herself, and two, that she had never really taken the time to appreciate that Serabin Glyphias was a very handsome man. He wore a grey military coat and pants, decorated with his metals and bars from his service to both Galbadia and Balamb. He had come directly from the Garden Board trial, he'd said, apologetic, and hadn't had time to change. He had taken off the jacket for dinner, and now sat in a very flattering white dress shirt that fit snugly across his toned chest and arms.

As if a man needed to apologize looking that good in uniform.

Quistis resisted the urge to pour her water glass over her head. "Um…no. No. I'm sorry. Nothing's wrong."

Yes. This date…_thing_….with Serabin, was a _very bad idea_.

_New topic._

Trying to cover her embarrassment, Quistis raised her champagne flute. "Congratulations on your nomination for Galbadian Headmaster. Aside from Xu, I believe you may be the youngest ever instated."

Serabin just smiled and shook his head. "Thank you, Quistis, but I believe my sudden inauguration owes more to politics than it does credentials. Were it not for my father's influence in Galbadian politics, I'm quite certain my name never would have stuck to the ballot as Squall and Xu wished it. Sirri allowed my instatement because he believes that the Garden entities will no longer exist in a few months. My father allowed my instatement because he views it as another way to conduct his version of politics. Pathetic man, my father." Serabin shook his head, glaring at his plate.

He looked up as Quistis placed her hand over his. "You're nothing like him. You're a good man, Serabin," she said quietly.

He met her gaze intensely. "Thank you. It means-"

"Excuse me, sir, my lady, may I take your orders now?"

Both Quistis and Serabin smiled sheepishly quickly picked up their menus. Quistis took one look at her menu and gave up immediately. "Serabin, would you order for me, please? I'm afraid I don't understand any of this."

"My pleasure," replied Serabin. "The lady will have the Chatique Le Seramble, and I will have the Octu Lemague."

"Very good, sir." The waiter bowed, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Serabin smiled at her. "Let's toast, instead, to healing. To repairing the Gardens and to your release from the hospital. That seems a greater accomplishment, doesn't it?"

"I suppose so," she agreed. "To you and I, then, out to dinner and healing."

Their glasses clinked together, and Serabin's smile warmed her almost as much as the champagne. No one had ever looked at her that way, with admiration and respect. The Trepies, perhaps, but there was no hero-worship in Serabin's eyes- only an adult respect and a politely (and barely) concealed desire that some primitive part of her brain recognized and responded to.

Quistis took another long drink of her champagne. "May I ask, Serabin, what exactly happened up in G.Garden that day?" She bowed her head. "I know it isn't fitting dinner conversation… but Irvine remembers very little of it, and I can tell that Squall doesn't really like to talk about it…"

"Brek Garek happened." Spat Serabin, his expression darkening. "I should have never turned my back on him."

"They're saying…that Seifer killed him." Said Quistis. "Sirri wants to file a wrongful death suit against Balamb Garden, on the grounds that Cid granted Seifer sanctuary and Seifer was responsible-"

Serabin snorted. "Sirri is an idiot and Brek Garek was a traitor to both Galbadia and Balamb. I shot him myself."

Quistis frowned. "But I thought-Seifer-"

Serabin took a long sip of champagne before setting his glass back onto the table. "I never liked Almasy. He was a terrible student, a mediocre magic user, and had an attitude larger than the entire institution. He was undependable and he was completely self-centered. He was the worst candidate for SeeD I've ever seen in my life."

Quistis stared at her table partner, a frown etched in her features, unsure to make of what her table partner was saying. It wasn't proper to speak of the dead with disrespect…even if the dead _had_ been an ex-war criminal and an insufferable egomaniac…

Serabin took a sip of champagne, impervious to her gaze. "-and if Almasy were to walk through Garden's doors right now, I'd hire him in a second."

Quistis' expression changed from one of light fury to one of surprise.

Serabin pointed to the faint scar lines across his face, nearly too faded to be visible. "Almasy hit me with a bolt spell in the face up in Galbadia Garden…burned out the neural disrupter that Garek crammed into my neck. At least I think…" Serabin frowned. "I _think_ I was trying to kill Almasy at the time."

"You don't remember?"

Serabin shook his head. "I remember…nuances of things. Tiny breaks in the neural poisons. It seems like a dream…all that time….lost."

Quistis could relate to dreams and lost time…all too well.

"But otherwise…no. I remember nothing." The young man frowned, as if he didn't know what to make of his next thought. "I think I owe Almasy my life…but then, I suppose all of us do, don't we?"

Quistis frowned as she tried to consider a merciful Seifer. It was not an image that she was used to. In fact, when her friends had all returned, telling stories of a man she had only wished for him to become…he seemed almost a stranger to her, even more distant than before.

And what did she do with this man? Commit _him_ to memory, or the one that had broken her heart? Which ghost could she live with?

Serabin thanked their waiter as he set down two beautiful china dishes decorated beautifully with sauces and accents and featuring the best aromas she had ever smelled in her life. He waited until the waiter was gone to speak again. "At any rate, Almasy ran Garek through with his sword, that's true, but I was the one that killed him."

Quistis looked down at her plate. "I see." Suddenly, she felt his hand on hers, and she looked up to Serabin looking sympathetic.

"It's difficult for you to talk about, I know," he said, quietly. "You and Mr. Almasy…were close, weren't you?"

Quistis shook her head. "Seifer and I weren't…anything, really."

_Keep lying, Trepe. Maybe you'll believe it eventually._

Serabin didn't look like he believed her, either, but was polite enough not to press the issue further.

After another long drink of champagne, Quistis picked up her utensils and took a small bite of the beautifully arranged meal in front of her. "What is this, chati-que, le-saramble anyway? It's delicious."

Serabin smiled as he fanned his napkin onto his lap. "It's probably best you don't know. I don't think you'd enjoy it so much if you did."

"I trust you," she replied.

And she did.

They ate in companionable silence for a few moments, listening to the gentle swell of the string quartet in the corner.

Against her will, Quistis thought of Joe's Tavern and Joe's 'chocobo wings of fire'. She thought of Seifer, leaning back against the greasy bar bench and laughing.

Quistis glared at the table cloth and took another long sip of champagne.

"Thank you for taking me here." Said Quistis quietly. "I've never been to such a nice restaurant before."

"That's a shame." Serabin inclined his head, glancing worriedly across the table as he refilled Quistis' wine glass for the second time in the evening. "And it's my pleasure, to have your company. I should be the one to thank you for coming."

Quistis blushed beneath the rim of her glass and searched for a safe subject to discuss with Serabin. One that didn't in some way involve Seifer Almasy.

"Concerning Galbadia," she continued. "I assume you're going to make some changes from Martine's administration? Assuming our success at the Supreme Council hearing, of course."

Serabin smiled ruefully. "It's going to be difficult to get enlistment, after the goings-on over the past few years. Galbadia Garden certainly won't be able to claim strength in numbers for quite some time. However, assuming I'm able to salvage a small group of able-bodied soldiers, I'm optimistic about the possibilities." He took a small sip of champagne. "I want to create a sister sect to SeeD. One that specializes in high-risk ops as well."

Quistis set down her napkin. "A sister-sect?"

"Yes, but this one will be quite different. But I don't want to bore you with the details. They aren't really fit for dinner conversation." Serabin's green eyes were positively glowing in the candlelight. It was clearly a subject he was passionate about.

"No, please," insisted Quistis. She had to stop drinking the champagne so fast. The candlelight was beginning to swell out of focus. "I would be interested to hear your plans."

Serabin set down his napkin. "I have Adel to thank for the idea, really. I first got the idea a few weeks ago when Arya was talking about salvaging some parts of Adel's bio-matter, and conducting it via electrical means to create a theoretically indestructible shield system. That's assuming that Balamb is rebuilt, of course."

Quistis frowned. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Well, recent develops in chemical engineering have rendered specific metal alloys capable of conducting a weak mag-current, which companies like BioTech originally began researching as an alternative power source," began Serabin, setting down his fork. "These theories also take their roots in slightly more advanced forms of weapon junctioning. That was the research that Odine was working on before he was apprehended, and how he rebuilt parts of Adel's body that didn't take to the nutrient salines."

"You mean, Adel really was half-machine?" She'd only heard stories from those that had been there, and even those seemed impossible.

"Yes. However, since magic thrives only in living tissue and is conducted through biotic synapses in the body, a bio-medium was needed. The poison isolated from the Neo-Sorceress Adel is actually a living tissue heavily affected by magical radiation, so much so that the Neo-Sorceress Adel was nearly magic herself. Combined with a basic preservative, this tissue can be combined with the metal to conduct a very, very strong magic current, over twice the amount that a human body is capable of. I'm not boring you, am I?"

"No. Not at all."

"Arya is talking about running these new cables up to Garden's northern and southern poles, where a shield twice as powerful as even Rinoa is capable of can be generated at will from pieces of Adel's biotic matter grafted onto metal wiring. Seven stations, powered by adept magic users, will provide the magic current necessary to generate these shields, which can be held over an extended period of time. Not even class-A missiles could tear it down."

"That's…amazing." Quistis took a smaller sip of her champagne, still feeling a bit light-headed. "I'm sorry, though, I don't see how that would relate to your new op program."

The young man smiled. "Yes, of course. The children that Adel captured were exposed to gradual amounts of mag-energy, fed into their veins in gradual doses-"

"She poisoned them, Serabin." Said Quistis, frowning, not liking where this train of thought was going. "Like I was. It's amazing they aren't dead."

"Yes and no. The level of mag-poisoning to which you were exposed, Quistis, was toxic because the levels at which it accumulated were too fast for your body to process. The children that Odine snatched off the street for test subjects suffered the same fate. If you look at his detailed logs, housed in the Galbadian mainframe, the children suffered bio accumulations in point-source abnomas, which is why some of their flesh had to be substituted for metal grafts. A prolonged, gradual exposure, however, allows the body to adjust and accommodate even higher concentrations."

"You're going to expose the soldiers to mag-radiation? Serabin, the human rights associations are going to be all over you, not to mention the costs-"

"Not at all. This will be a special unit, on a purely voluntary basis. The DS Research Center has also offered to climb aboard. They have access to several facilities, including a power plant up north that can be renovated for our uses and since it's still experimental, it won't cost a thing. Personally, I think Dr. Wellshire just wants to push a new thesis," Serabin chuckled, until he saw the look of concern on Quistis' face. "Don't worry, Quistis. The highest care will be taken."

"Where are you going to find volunteers?" The entire process seemed surreal. Unconsciously, she rubbed at her arms.

Serabin smiled and rolled up one of his sleeves, revealing a discolored, bright bruise running the length of his arm. Needlemarks were stuck in nearly every available expanse of skin. It looked horrible...mangled. Like her own arms had been in the early days.

"You're looking at test subject number one. We don't expect any initial advancement in casting ability, of course, but the effects could be great over longer periods of time. The Magiteck are only children, and their capacity to cast was increased ten-fold. Imagine what the process could do to an adult."

Quistis resisted the urge to look down at her arms, at the ugly, disfiguring scars beneath the gloves. "Yes…" she said, quietly. "I suppose the program has great potential."

Serabin smiled, unreceptive to her hesitant tone. "I hope so. Mag-poisoning would be virtually eliminated. This will bring to the forefront a _new breed of_ _soldier, _a new, more sustainable form of energy-"

A chill ran through Quistis' body, one she couldn't explain. Shivering, she took another long sip of champagne.

Serabin said something else, but she missed it. He set down his napkin, smiling warmly at her. "But I've talked enough business. Would you care to dance?"

The music was fairly swimming in her ears. "Yes, I would." She was surprised to find that she meant it.

But even as his arms came around her, even as the music swelled and the champagne filled her with a wide and shallow warmth, even though his eyes were a very warm and fascinating shade of green, her mind lingered a moment on another dance, in another time, one that she had sworn was dead to her.

She smiled up at him, and let the music take her.

…

…

…

Seifer ducked his head into the wind, balancing the wooden pole on his shoulders to prevent the almost frozen water from sloshing into the snow. He'd spent the last hour trudging up and down the mountain, searching for a spring-fed well that Masa insisted on having water from. He hadn't bothered to point out that the man lived on a fucking snow-covered mountain, miles away from civilization, and therefore had tons of clean snow (and thus, clean water) at his senile disposure. Having now spent weeks as the walking slave of the old man's apparent dementia, Seifer no longer bothered to question either the method or the madness. Seifer now knew why the old man did not accept money for his services- having a personal slave was much more amusing.

Edging the heavy wooden door open with his shoulder, he entered the small cabin, shaking the snow from his coat and boots.

The old man looked up, nodding at him. "Good. You may change and join me for supper."

Seifer set down the buckets and hung the carrying stick in the corner before walking into the small, cramped space Masa considered a bedroom. A small reed mat lay on the floor with a single thin blanket folded beside it. A small metal pot of glowing coals sat in a corner, filling the room with a shallow warmth. Next to the pot was a small wooden rack, over which a fire-red silk robe had been draped with an oversized black belt that wound around his middle. Masa insisted that Seifer change into the strange, long robe before the evening meals and discussions, and after an initial feeling of weirdness at wearing what Seifer considered glorified bathing wear, he found he was growing to like the soft, loose-fitting attire. Changing out of his wet, stiff clothing, Seifer slipped on the robe, and walked out to where Masa was sitting on a reed matt in front of the fire, sipping a cup of tea. A large, curved sword was laid out next to him, the blade at least four feet in length and bowed slightly in a smooth arc. The firelight swam on the metal, lighting the blade in a warm, ethereal glow. The blade was polished so smoothly, it looked like water. Seifer had never seen a blade like that in his entire life. Even Hyperion had been a crude standard-issue, which he'd scrimped and saved to upgrade.

Masa looked up, the fire glittering in his dark eyes. "Ah, admiring the blade, I see."

Seifer eased himself down onto the matt, helping himself to a bowl of rice. "Yeah, it's pretty cool. You made it?"

The old man smiled. "I want to tell you a story about two swordsmiths. Men who surpassed all others in their fields. Very talented, very gifted men who worked hard and took great pleasure in their craft. However, one man's heart was filled with peace and wisdom. The other's was filled with violence and dreams of power. In any case, neither was above a little competition. Each of these men made a sword that each claimed was their most superior work. It is said in legend that these swords are the greatest ever made, but then, legend is prone to exaggeration."

Seifer took a bite of rice, listening intently.

"They decided to test the ability of the swords. They tell a story of a lily pad that was released in a river upstream. Each man then stood in the river, and pointed the tip of the sword into the water. The lily pad went around the sword made by the first man. The second sword split the lily pad cleanly in two. Which of these swords were superior?"

Seifer swallowed, thinking. "The sharp one, I guess. The one that cut the leaf."

Masa shook his head. "No. It was the first sword which embodied the true spirit of an honorable warrior."

"How?"

Masa held up the blade, which now seemed to swim in the firelight, making dazzling, fiery patterns on the sword's silken silver surface. "The entire point of a sword is to enforce peace by its presence. I want you to think on that."

Seifer digested the old man's words. It was something he had never thought of before.

Masa leaned forward, holding the sword out to Seifer. "I want you to train with this sword, until your other one is ready."

Seifer shook his head. "I couldn't. I can't. My arm-"

"-will not improve without work. Take the sword." Masa smiled at the reluctant look on the young man's face. "It won't bite."

Reluctantly, Seifer reached out and took the handle. A subtle tremor went up his arm, soft and soothing. There was power in the blade, and it hummed in the air like a living electricity. It was amazing...it felt as if the power to destroy a village lay in this sword...the power to cut down anything in his way. And yet, there was a kind of calmness in the metal...one that made his arm tired…one that made him want to set the sword down. For a moment, it seemed as if the sword was a part of his arm, a part of him.

Seifer blinked, and the feeling was gone just as quickly. Reluctantly, he sheathed the sword in the casing Masa handed to him and set it down at his side.

"Train with this sword, and then I want you to tell me why the sword that does not cut is more powerful than one that does." Masa's eyes glowed as Seifer met his gaze. "Train. When the snow has melted, then you and your sword shall be ready."

…

…

…

Over the years, the Esthar Inn had claimed the privilege of hosting many of the world's greatest leaders and most famous musicians. The candlelit ballrooms and the chandelier-decked hallways gave light to thick, ancient carpets and well-preserved tapestries. Currently the Esthar hotel lobby was filled with out of work soldiers, many of which were draped in odd positions on the furniture and sprawled out on the floor. A sign out in the front of the large hotel had read 'No Vacancy' for the last four months.

Plush couches were filled with manila folders and hi-lighters, and an entire corner was devoted to several laptops, where Arya and Xyrxis were practically permanent fixtures.

Selphie, Irvine and Zell were propped up on one another on a large crushed velvet sofa, each reading from books of various regulations and case standards, and pinching each other to stay awake. Squall and Xu, when they weren't on the phone, were hunched over a large legal pad, scrawling down notes as different cadets brought up information or printed documents. Quistis and Serabin occupied another couch, dragging highlighters across a stack of documents that reached Serabin's knees and yawning at random. Cerberus sat next to Quistis on the couch, his head in her lap, pausing between naps to supervise Serabin's activities.

Rinoa, Ma Dinct, and Edea Kramer kept the hotel kitchen staff busy, making sure each cadet and junior classmen had enough warm soup, hot coffee, and warm blankets. The Estharian Inn wasn't Balamb Garden to be sure, but surrounded by their comrades, it was home, for now.

A kind of hushed expectation surrounded the group, present in each soldier's movement and mannerisms. It knit the group together like the common air an army breathed before a battle. This battle was rooted in paperwork and laws, but it was no less crucial. Each moment was calculated, each movement was coordinated.

It was almost time.


	36. Healing

Author's notes: I believe it's Plato that makes the comment about war, not Masa. I would also like to point out that I have butchered the legacy of Hyperion to suit my own needs, as well as countless other mythologies splattered throughout these chapters. Also, Seifer's little speech from his old man was inspired in part by the movie Se7en. If you haven't seen it, do. 'Out, damned stain', is from MacBeth, I believe. Also, what Chu and Seifer are yelling at each other in is an actual language- it's Latin. I could have translated the phrases, but I think that loses some of the potency. They're fairly common/popular phrases, and are easy to look up, if you're so inclined.

Thanks to all my readers and reviewers- you guys are wonderful. A hello goes out again to Jes and Liz- hope you enjoy your Serabin this chapter, Jes. There will two more chapters after this, the end chapter and the epilogue, and I promise some upcoming fluff for all the angst these two characters (and the rest of you) have had to trudge through. Due to a recent loss, the last chapter may not be up for some time, until I'm better able to write a happy ending. My apologies in advance. Recommended listening: I've found that several Inuyasha soundtrack songs work well in this chapter.

Disclaimer: The only thing I've made up myself in this story are a computer geek, an over-sized dog, a bunch of evil antagonists, a handsome Galbadian headmaster, two nosey old men, and an ornery Chocobo. Feel free to borrow them, just I've borrowed Square's ideas.

_Disarm you with a smile  
And cut you like you want me to  
Cut that little child  
Inside of me and such a part of you  
Ooh, the years burn_

_Disarm you with a smile  
And leave you like they left me here  
To wither in denial  
The bitterness of one who's left alone  
Ooh, the years burn_

_I used to be a little boy  
So old in my shoes  
And what I choose is my voice  
What's a boy supposed to do?  
The killer in me is the killer in you  
My love  
I send this smile over to you_

**_-Smashing Pumpkins, Disarm_**

"I don't like it." Muttered Zell, stapling yet another packet together. "Drosskow comes out of this whole thing smelling like a rose."

"We've got dirt on him, he's got destruction of property on us. Either way, we got each other by the balls," replied Irvine, squinting at yet another inventory print-out.

"Yeah, but admitting we destroyed his property would mean we could reveal Xyionn to the public," added Zell, swearing as a staple stuck in his finger.

"If we reveal Xyionn to the public, dummy, he's gonna have no problem draggin' us down with him. We got enough problems as it is with the Garden Council breathin' down our backs. We'll just have to shut him down in the future. He's an idiot if he doesn't think we'll have constant surveillance on him from now on."

"Oh, I dunno, he probably thinks that there won't be a Garden to be keeping him on surveillance," replied Zell gravely.

Arya looked up from her computer, adjusting her bug-glasses. "Still, we could blacklist him! I've got access records from the IGCS system that'll ruin him, no problem. We wouldn't need the Xyionn cult evidence, then." Arya looked positively giddy, like a child on her birthday.

"You'd sell out Drosskow?" Zell clapped a hand to his chest dramatically. "The future father of your unborn children?"

Arya gave him a dirty look. "Without Drosskow's ass on the fire, good luck tying in any conspiracy theories," she replied, before going back to her computer.

"Come on, Arya, let's hear what you've got," said Irvine, setting down his stack of printer feeds.

Arya stopped typing and removed her glasses. "Well, so far our case fits together pretty air-tight, right? We've got Odine linked to pretty much everyone in the Galbadian Government as well as a few contributors in Esthar. We've got Martine as the middle-man, between Odine's journal and the Spec Sheets wired to Galbadia through AmmuCorp….but we still don't have our crowning jewel for the centerpiece." Arya spread her hands expressively. "Why did the IGCS system fail? Why were the systems shut down with no notification or personnel back-up? Odine hints at it…but I've finally got proof of it."

"Which is?"

"Access codes." replied Arya, turning her small laptop so that both of the men in front of her could see it.

Millions of lines filled the screen.

Zell squinted. "And this is what, besides complete gibberish to the rest of us?"

"It's Access Coding between the IGCS system and the system mainframes. Ummm…" Arya furrowed her brow in an effort to explain. "It's like listening in on the conversations between two computers."

Zell rolled his eyes. "How terribly naughty of us."

Arya ignored her boyfriend and continued. "Anyway, the access reports show several systems accessing the mainframe until its failure. Each institution linked to the IGCS, like Balamb, had an access code, one that allowed them to operate through a portion of the system. One, however, this one-" she pointed at the screen. "This one only accessed the system once, and was given full reign of the systems immediately. It was wired through the Galbadian server, though completely independent of any Galbadian Garden line code-"

"Adel." Said Irvine.

Arya nodded. "It wouldn't have surprised me that Adel could access the system. However, it only accessed it once. To know that many lines of code, the creature would have to have been somehow clairvoyant, or-"

"Given the codes in the first place, and only Drosskow would have had the main access key." Finished Irvine. "This is great, Arya!"

The computer specialist beamed. "This will destroy both Galbadian and Drosskow's credibility, along with the forensic evidence that Kadowaki obtained from the exhumations of those IGCS employees. This evidence puts Drosskow in bed with both Martine and Odine."

Irvine and Zell made a face at each other at the thought, but Arya didn't seem to notice.

Zell stapled another packet together, looking thoughtful. "Now that just leaves tying up the eyewitness testimony that Quistis got in Tromedia."

"Which was?" asked Arya.

"Some old guy that lived next to the tower claimed that before the IGCS tower failed, a barrage of military trucks drove in there in the middle of the night. No maintenance was confirmed for that night, much less for that month." Said Zell. "But it'd be nearly impossible to tie Galbadia in-"

Arya shook her head. "There's enough evidence there to establish reasonable doubt, actually. Let's think of it. The only establishments that have mobile truck units are the Gardens. First of all, Tromedia is practically in the middle of nowhere. If Trabia were the saboteur, you'd have to consider that Trabia's military trucks are roller-based instead of wheel-based, to deal with the snow. They're gas-guzzlers because of their G-96 type engine. There's no way that they could make it to Tromedia without extensive refueling."

"True." Said both Irving and Zell.

"Now, let's think of Balamb. We both know that Balamb didn't send trucks, but let's play devil's advocate anyway. Balamb would have had to transport our mobile units overseas. To do that, we'd have to use our boat units, and even then, the mobiles are highly fuel-inefficient and would've required massive refueling. There aren't any refueling stations outside Galbadia."

Arya closed her laptop. "Now. It would be just as difficult for Galbadia to mobilize units, except for the fact that Galbadia has a remote truck base **just outside** Tromedia since its occupation ten years ago. It would have taken **zero** fuel to mobilize those units."

Irvine frowned. "I didn't know that Galbadia had occupied Trabia."

"Not many did. Tromedia was small, and Galbadia occupied it more to stabilize the region than to utilize it for resources or military territory. It wasn't particularly well-advertised." Said Arya.

Zell was looking at his girlfriend in shock. "Wow. You're amazing."

She smiled, and the three resumed their work.

Irvine chuckled. "You really are, 'rya. The hell are you doing with Zell, anyway?"

Arya grinned. "Fringe benefits."

"Huh?"

"All the hot dogs, of course."

Zell dove at her then, and she erupted into giggles as her boyfriend proceeded to tickle her senseless.

Irvine rolled his eyes. "Ah think ah'm gonna be sick. We'll have to find out where that confession is from Quistis, then. Anyone know where she is?"

Zell was currently trying to wrest Arya off of him, who was holding a pillow over his head. "Mfff tsh alfnnshy ifff Srfnnn." A pause. "Myf fnn."

"What?"

Arya looked up for a moment. "On the balcony, with Serabin. He thinks."

...

...

...

When Quistis was not working diligently to prepare for the trial, she could often be found out on the Estharian hotel balcony, staring down into the city below at odd hours of the morning and evening. It was a fantastic view, and it gave her time to clear her head. She could see the reconstruction taking place on the fringe of the city. Farther in, she could see passing people, bicycles…

…passing couples…

She gazed them with a mixture of jealousy and longing as they walked beneath her, oblivious to her observation and her envy.

Today, a family was passing under the window, carrying groceries. The father carried bags in both arms, and a little girl rode high on his shoulders, her small hands gripping his cheeks. The mother had one arm full of bags, and the other was slung in with her husband's. All were smiling.

Quistis, her chin in her hand as she leaned against the railing, narrowed her eyes as they passed. A strange kind of anger burned in her stomach and moistened the lines around her eyes. She had never been worthy of a family before, and now….it was yet another dream that was dead in her.

The little girl squinted her eyes up at the sky and, noticing Quistis on the balcony, raised her hand to wave at her. Slowly, Quistis raised her own hand and waved, slowly, as another life she would never have passed her by.

"May I join you, Miss Trepe?"

She turned to see Serabin behind her in the doorway, his long form slouching along the beam. His silver hair was getting longer, and today, he had part of it tied back, the rest of it falling handsomely across his shoulders. He had pulled out the shirt beneath his military jacket, and had rolled up his sleeves in a sloppily casual manner that was unlike him. He apparently, had finished working for the day as well.

"Yes, of course. Please." She said, moving to make room for him near the banister. "Have you and Xu finished your trial preparations?"

"As much as can be expected," said Serabin. "Edea contacted Squall. We'll leave for the wake in one week exactly. She's made all the arrangements already."

Cid's wake.

Don't think of it.

Quistis knotted her hands together. "How is Edea holding up? Did Squall say?"

"As well as can be expected, I imagine." Said Serabin. "And what about you, Quistis? You've done nothing but work since they discharged you."

"I'm fine." She replied.

Fine, fine fine.She'd been 'fine' for weeks.

Serabin frowned as he leaned onto the banister beside her, staring down at the crowds below. "So that's what keeps you out here. The view."

"It's nice, isn't it?" She smiled, and leaned out on the railing next to him. It was a small space, and their arms brushed against eachother. His shoulder was warm, and he smelled nice, like spice and sweat. "I wanted to thank you for dinner the other night, Serabin…if I didn't say so, I had a nice time."

Serabin returned her smile, and put his hand over hers. "As did I. I hope you'll let me take you out again, sometime soon, Quistis, when this is over."

His hand was as warm as his shoulder, and she felt guilty for noticing.

And what good was this? To harbor hopes for a life that was long gone…to harbor allegiances to ghosts long past…

Out, damned stain, thought Quistis, resisting the urge to drive the heel of her hand into her skull.

Her smile faded. "Serabin, I appreciate your courtesy, but it's really not necessary to-"

His green eyes glittered as he gazed out at the Estharian horizon. "Quistis, you'll forgive me for my boldness, but I find you to be a very lovely and intelligent young woman, and I can't believe that you would not realize my desire to spend time with you has absolutely nothing to do with courtesy. In fact, quite the opposite."

Quistis looked down at her hands.

"I also hope," said Serabin, carefully, turning to regard her, "that you'll forgive me for this."

She knew he was about to kiss her, recognized that intent and heated look in his eyes. Part of her knew it would be right to politely refuse him, to tell him that she was not a woman, but a wasteland and a waste of time. But she could not bring herself to do it. Though half of her wanted to keep her distance…half of her wanted to feel any other way than she'd felt the last few months. To feel anything but the heavy, dark weight of grief around her shoulders, in her chest, in her heart…

And suddenly, his lips were on hers, soft and asking. It was nothing like the last kiss she'd shared, which had been hard and demanding, and had left no room for doubt. And yet, the sensation was not unpleasant, and it was nice to feel wanted….to feel anything besides the hollow ache inside her…

She hesitated, a moment, then slipped her hands into his hair, letting her body fall into his, letting his lips ghost over hers. She closed her eyes.

Recognizing the invitation, his hands came to rest on her hips as he deepened the kiss.

Her heart ached for a moment, and reached for something-

-and closed around air. She blinked her eyes open for a moment, but they soon slid shut.

Serabin's hands were in her hair now, and gently- so gently, he was urging her closer. And so she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him there on the terrace, hoping that, for once, her ghosts would stay in the shadows and let her forget.

…

… …

Seifer was no longer sure if the pounding in his head was due to the nails or the pounding coming from the shack.

Spring had come to the mountain, and it had lodged itself in Seifer's bones, itching at him and making him restless. Sensing this, Masa moved his chores outside. As a result, Seifer's favorite activity was now reshingeling the roof, which allowed him an excellent view of the mountain range, and the dragons that soared through it. A gush of air and a high, keening wail was usually Seifer's only warning before the hiss of air on leathery wing and scale whirred past him. They circled the mountains, bellowing challenges, screeching warnings or sometimes, emitting high, mellow notes that almost sounded like singing. Seifer's favorite was a large white beast, an old albino dragon that Masa called "The White Wind". This dragon was old, and scarred, and sliced through the skies with a kind of easy grace. Seifer set down his hammer to watch him fly, sometimes for hours at a time.

The snow was finally beginning to recede on other parts of the mountain, revealing small patches of grass. For the most part, 'spring' on Masa's part of the mountain simply meant it stopped snowing for a few hours every day and that the sun was occasionally present enough to warm small patches of ground.

Seifer had also been allotted the somewhat undesirable task of handling the Chocobo pens. What the old man was doing with a shed full of ornery birds, he had no idea. The man had mentioned something about mining, but that hadn't made any sense either. At any rate, Masa had an impressive collection of the huge birds, which ranged in size and color. Seifer had little to no experience with the overgrown chickens, and admittedly, the creatures made him a little nervous. Most of the hens were calm and sweet-tempered, and ate from his hand. One bird in particular, however, a blue male, seemed intent on biting his arm off. It was the most ill-tempered and ornery creature Seifer had ever seen.

Most days, Seifer could relate.

"Ah, Glyphius." Masa had said, walking up behind Seifer one day as he poured grain into the feeding troughs, keeping a wary eye on the blue Chocobo. "Captured that bird at the base of my mountain. Wild, that one."

"I've noticed." Replied Seifer wryly.

"What do you know about Chocobos?"

"That their brain is about the size of a walnut-ow!" Glyphius had taken advantage of Seifer's momentary lapse in attention to nip at his arm. Even through several layers of animal skins, the sharp beak still stung.

"Ah." Masa nodded approvingly. "Likes you."

"Are you completely insane?" snapped Seifer, rubbing the offended area. "He just tried to take my arm off!"

"Hardly." Masa chuckled, tucking his hands back into his long robes before turning to walk out of the pens. "If a Chocobo wants your arm, Seifer Almasy, he takes it."

Seifer muttered and turned back to the bird, who was watching him intently, bobbing his head and warbling low in his throat. "Everyone on this fucking mountain is nuts," he muttered, turning to follow after the old man.

That night, Masa read from his extensive library, as he often did. Perhaps the old man considered Seifer illiterate, or was simply used to the sound of his own voice. Seifer reclined against the shop wall, soaking up the firelight and listening to the man's deep rumble of a voice.

"Chocobos were used in times of war for their fearlessness and courage in battle. A great swordsman, Ragusth, and his Chocobo, Talun, once boasted kills of over five hundred men combined in various battles of the early Trabian empire. In ancient times, an archer or swordsman would ride atop the Chocobo, and the loyal bird would take care of enemies on the ground by trampling, mangling, and pecking them to death." Said Masa, reading from an old text.

Seifer made a mental note to stay farther from Glyph from then on.

During the days, Masa emerged from the hut from time to time, a hulking slouch of animal furs, to bring Seifer water or to comment good-naturedly on how long it was taking. Mostly, however, Masa remained in the shack. The sound of steel pounding steel seemed to shake the entire mountain some days, but Masa never let him see the process. 'Bad luck,' he said. At sunset, Masa insisted that Seifer practice with the borrowed sword. Insisted was perhaps too weak a word. The old man, like Chu, locked him out of the cabin until he did it. After a few hours of stubborn freezing, he eventually concluded that there were worse things he could do than move his arms a little.

It was awkward at first, trying to transfer the natural fluidity of the blade to the uneven static of his bad arm, and he dropped it more than swung it. But it seemed to make the old man happy. And Seifer found that, somewhat against his nature, he was beginning to like the hulking old geezer, and that there were worse things than making the old man happy.

Like pissing him off, for example…

In the evenings, he and Masa would sit by the fire in the soft robes, and Seifer found himself beginning to speak about everything: of Xu and Garden, crazy Odine and the missing children, of Quistis and Cerberus. He wasn't sure why words seemed to come so easy with the old man, but once they started, it was hard to stop. Masa seemed to take a special delight in hearing of Quistis, in particular. The giant's booming laughter shook the walls when Seifer told him stories of Cerberus and how Quistis had faced both the dog and a room full of frightened shipping men, and how he had embarrassed her in a run-down bar. He told him how they had stolen a ride on a train, and how she had exploded a Marlboro in the snow, and wound up wearing it.

It was difficult to speak of her at first, but Seifer found himself laughing at points, too, and it helped him to get past the pain of speaking her name. She was distant in this place- far away from Esthar and Balamb, he could speak of her almost as if she were still alive. Masa, for his part, spoke of great swordsmen, and great battles long past. Seifer found that he was fascinated by the wars of the old times…it was easy to forget that the honorable warriors of old fought wars started by the same greed and stupidity that created them today.

"Only a dead man has seen the end of war," Masa had said ,once. "And yet, I make each of my swords hoping it will never be needed…craft each blade in the hopes that it will never see blood…that its presence alone will make peace. I suppose it is foolish…a painter who paints pictures that he hopes will never be seen. Still…I suppose I make swords…so that one day, they will no longer be necessary. That, one day, all men will lay down those swords, and be redeemed."

As Seifer crouched on the roof, the world below him and covered in a mix of snow and shadow, he reflected on what the old swordsmith had said.

He was tired. He was tired of feeling guilty, tired of hanging his head like a broken horse with an abandoned bridle trailing behind him. But, could he be redeemed? Could sins ever be repaid? Could all the blood spilled in his life ever wash clean?

No. Even here, a thousand miles away from the people and pains he had run from, he knew that redemption was an idea for lesser men, of men who were capable of forgetting the things they had done. There would always be blood on his hands. The memories were the price of what he had done, and bearing them would bring him attrition from the pain of it…but never would it bring forgiveness. There would always be stains on his heart that soaked too deep to wring out...and he deserved to have them there. He could never forget that…and he found he didn't want to.

But could he avoid shedding more blood? There would always be wars that called for the blood of innocent men, and those that were willing to spill it. Could he be one of those men?

In all truth, Seifer had not wanted his old sword reforged. He had never wanted to lift it again, never wanted to hear that metallic song and know that it would mean death for either him or the thing in front of him. The closer Masa came to finishing the sword, the more Seifer realized how little he wanted to lift it again.

His breath condensed to a thick vapor in the air as he hammered the last nail into the now finished roof.

Done.

It felt good to be finished…a clean and simple feeling. He was proud of the roof. It was honest work…perhaps the only honest work he had ever done in his life. Leaning back on his haunches, he looked up at the sky and thought about two swords and a stream. He thought about a faded coat and a wasted life.

He thought about a pretty girl by the ocean, her hair whipping in the wind and her laughter chasing him through space and time.

That night as they sat by the fire, Seifer found himself once again thinking of one particular story that Masa had told him, one that weighed heavy on his mind. The fire crackled in the fireplace, soaking into his skin and warming his feet. Masa was unusually quiet tonight, legs folded and his large palms resting on his knees. He appeared to be thinking heavily about something as well.

"I've been thinking about what you said. You know, about the two swords." He said.

Masa raised an eyebrow.

"I guess it's kinda like my childhood. Growing up…I hated my old man. He was a drunk and a failure. I always thought he was a good-for-nothing bastard, but now I think…he was just weak. It's easier to break things. It's easier to hit a kid than to raise it. It's easier to turn your back on things than to fix them. And after my mom died, he took the easy way. And though I swore I'd never be like my old man, that's how I've lived my life up till now…the easy way. I cut down everything that stood in my way, and turned my back on the things I couldn't push around. Like the first sword…I thought that was power. I thought it would make me happy, but it didn't. When Adel showed me the two futures, a future with power, and a future with none, I was…surprised at which one I wanted."

Masa looked thoughtful, but nodded at him to continue.

"When I was younger, I couldn't wait to go off to war. I was always waiting for an excuse to fight. Didn't matter who, or where. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be unbreakable. And if that meant knocking people down to get there…I was fine with that." Seifer stared hard into the flames, frowning. "I looked for any excuse to draw my sword. Now, I'd give anything not to. When Adel showed me the two futures, I realized that I wanted the second future. That I didn't want to fight anymore. I was tired of fighting. I think I've been fighting my whole life."

Silence, except for the crackle of the fire.

Seifer looked from the flames to Masa. "It's kinda like those swords, I guess. And I thought, in a perfect world, the most powerful warrior would never have to draw his sword to make peace. Just him being there…that would be enough. He'd be…a watcher, not a destroyer. That's real power, I think. That's how I want to be…someday, if that's possible."

Masa said nothing, but smiled.

…

…

…

The battlefield was beating like a slow, dark heart, throbbing in her blood. Sticky in her head, pulsing...She shook her head, trying desperately to clear the foggy sluggishness that clung to her limbs.

**Quistis!**

She turned her head at the sound, but no one was there.

The breeze picked up, threading through her hair and stirring the tears on her cheek. Absently, she brushed her fingertips against the moisture.

**Why am I crying?**

Emerald plains stretched out, scorched and battletorn...the earth was charred with the marks of war. Thick, black scraps cut into the ground beneath the blue sky…scars the children made upon their mother.**My arms don't hurt.**

She looked down at her wrists, only to find that there were no scars, no traces of anything at all.

And yet...

She could feel the earth beating...she could feel the heart of the battle beating in her arms...stuck inside and wanting to be free...to get out...

**…****GET OUT...**

"Stop it." she commanded, and the sound cut to silence.  
Clouds were stirring overhead, rumbling with the approach of a storm. She blinked.

The battlefield was filled with Galbadian soldiers...their flesh dripping from their skeletons with every step, pouring into the earth like pale paint...eye sockets filled with a strange, red light. Sons. Daughters. Fathers. Sisters. They saluted her, one by one.All dead.

Cid, Seifer…

All dead.

She closed her eyes.

**No more.  
**  
She swept her hand across the blurry, bloody canvas, and the picture faded. Disappeared.

She looked at her hand, astonished, and looked up to see what remained.

The ocean. The ocean, calm…sunset spilled across it like a still canvas.

And just like that, she was a child again, her small hands buried in the sand and her summer dress blowing around her ankles. The pain in her arms was gone.**The cottage.**** Before I left.**

She gazed out onto the water, and found herself staring at a young man knee-deep in the waves, his eyes tainted and the once bright luster faded, his forehead carved with a tell-tale scar.

**Seifer.**

The Seifer she knew. The Seifer she remembered.

He was reaching out to her, shouting something that was lost in the pound of the waves. Trying to run to through the water, trying to reach her.

Without a second thought, she barreled into the waves herself, the icy chill nearly knocking her back. She reached out her hand, and it was her own once again, tainted with scar tissue and the constant pain of the poison.

She gripped his hand, and it was warm.

**I missed you.**

He was saying something, but she couldn't understand him.

The waves were growing stronger. She could feel her hand slipping. There was sadness in his eyes.

Resolution. She was losing him again.

**"No!"  
**  
A flash of light, and she was being carried. Carried somewhere. It was wet, and cold, and bumpy….

"Draw." His voice, stricken, shouting at her. "Wake up, Quistis!" Being shaken. Being held too tight. "Wake up!"

"Turn left here! Left! You can't go up that road!" Another voice, shouting over the motor.

"Can't you hurry it up?"

"The engine'll blow if we go any faster!"

"**Draw**…ugh, fuck! Just go faster!" Being pulled up….pulled into the pain.

Wet rain on her forehead. She just wanted to go to sleep…to sleep where the ocean was waiting….

She wanted to reach up to him, to tell him it was all right.

"Wake up, Quistis."

"**Wake up, Quistis**."

She opened her eyes to find her pillow soaked with tears, a strangled sob lodged in her throat. She gasped for breath and rolled onto her back, her hair stuck to her cheeks and her heart racing.

An arm wound around her, solid and warm. Green eyes in the pale light of the bedside clock.

"What's wrong?" Serabin's eyes, filled with concern, his voice scratchy with sleep. The press of his naked skin against hers was warm and she rolled over into his waiting arms, her face nestled into the crook of his shoulder, her eyes wide open in the dark.

He shifted. "Quistis, what is it?"

Quistis shook her head, tears sliding silently down her cheeks onto the pillow. "Nothing...it's nothing. Just a dream."

…

…

…

The following morning, there was a large, cloth-wrapped object that was laid out in front of the fire, soaking up the shadows of the coals. Dawn had not yet surfaced, but a thin, milky light was beginning to pour over the mountain, bathing it in the first fires of morning.

"Come and sit with me." Said Masa, hunching his hulking form into a sitting position in front of the fireplace.

Seifer approached the dying fire, staring down at the package in front of it as she sat down.

Masa bowed. "Your sword, Seifer Almasy."

Finished.

Carefully, Masa leaned forward and unwrapped the velvet covering, revealing the shimmering surface of a blade. Cupping his hands beneath the blade, Masa set the sword before him.

It was the most beautiful blade Seifer had ever seen.

The sword was larger than the old Hyperion, and flatter. Seifer could see a slight gold tinge in the metal, one that caught the light in subtle, straited strands.

"Your mother's ring." Said Masa. A large, scarred hand passed over the blade. "Your stories, too."

The blade arced slightly out to a long, solid triangle tip that looked like a silver icicle, pointed and sharp. Seifer ran a thumb along the edge, and drew his finger back with a film of blood on it. The underside of the blade had been whetted to a fine, thin razor edge as well- sharp enough to penetrate both skin and bone, if necessary. It was going to be a bitch to sharpen.

Masa seemed to read his mind. "A sword is like flesh, Seifer Almasy. Like a scar, it heals twice as strong as before. This sword will not break. This sword will never need sharpening. This sword," said Masa, "is indestructible."

A small cross shape had been etched out of the metal near the hilt. Fire Cross.

Seifer tried to pick up the sword and nearly dropped it. The weight was at least twice that of Hyperion. Gritting his teeth, he forced his crippled arm to support and steady the sword's weight, looking along the length of the blade.

"No revolver hybrid," said Masa indignantly. "The grace of a blade should not be compromised by the crudeness of a gun. This is a pure broadsword style. I've eliminated the diagonal handle, which I believe with your hawk-style blade play will increase leverage power substantially."

"How do you know my fighting style?" asked Seifer, frowning.

Masa smiled. "Watched you practice."

Seifer tested the weight of the sword. Perfect balance.

"It is a good sword." Masa said simply. Coming from the seasoned sword smith, however, the modest words were weighted. The sword was more than 'good.' It, like all of Masa's works, was unparalleled.

It didn't look like his old sword. It looked better... strange. Still, the vibrations that cut through his arm as he swung the blade were familiar, tremoring up his arm like a familiar embrace. Hyperion's weight was still in there, but the balance was more fluid now…less choppy. It reminded him of the blade Masa had loaned him, except this blade was heavier, less easy to wield.

"Hyperion." He muttered.

Masa shook his head. "No. Hyperion is a dead blade...a ghost in this metal." He ran his fingers along the metal as if it were a sleeping child. "I will tell you a story, Seifer Almasy. In the legends of the old gods, Hyperion had a son, one he named Helios. The child was born crippled, disfigured. So, Hyperion cast him down from Heaven, to be lost and forgotten in the cold shadows of earth. But Helios survived, and became a light that one day outshone his father."

Helios. Seifer frowned as he stared at the blade, at its pure and shimmering surface.

Masa was smiling as he watched Seifer lift the sword. "This blade is like you, Seifer Almasy," he muttered, too soft for Seifer to hear. "It carries legacy of a fallen father. This blade, then, will be your guiding light. …and may you be Helios, a guiding light for men."

…

…

…

The seaside cottage seemed smaller than she remembered. The cold stone floors, the wood furniture…all seemed diminished in some aspect she could not name. But, she supposed, that was the consequence of growing up. To watch the world around you shrink in strange ways, until everything was distorted or forgotten. The world had not changed, but she had, and it bent now against her perception, instead of the other way around.

She stood in the entryway, letting the silence settle over her.

If she stood still long enough, she could hear old ghosts shuffling past her feet, winding through the silence trailing laughter from years long past.

If she looked hard enough, she could almost see a little boy with darting through the small stone cottage…a little boy with green eyes and a shock of blonde hair-

She blinked, and he was gone.

"Quistis."

She turned at the sound of her name to find Edea standing in the doorway, her arms filled with flowers. "My child. I'm so pleased you're here."

Quistis set down her suitcase and dutifully walked to her surrogate mother, embracing her. She had not embraced Edea often- the older woman had always maintained a distance between herself and her children, her kindness and love a constant presence, but always slightly out of reach. Quistis supposed it was because she had not really expected her children to return to her…or that they were borrowed children, children on loan from tragedy.

Indeed, perhaps they really were more Fate's children than any mortal mother's.

Edea set the flowers down and held her at arm's length, a smile on her lips. "You're looking much better."

Quistis bowed her head respectfully. "Thank you. The others are still on the Ragnarok, taking care of some last minute arrangements. The other boats should be arriving shortly."

The ships…the soldiers…all come to pay homage to a fallen king. Fatherless children come to bury their father.

Edea walked into the kitchen, setting down the basket. "Please, come and have a seat. The children are out playing by the ocean."

Quistis pulled up a seat at the kitchen table. "I know. I let Cerberus down by the water so that they could play with him." Despite the dog's somewhat exaggerated reputation as an eater of children, the large mongrel actually seemed to enjoy their company, and took great pleasure in chasing them down the beach. Since the children seemed to enjoy being chased, she'd left them all by the shore to enjoy their mutual arrangement.

Edea put a kettle on to boil. "Tell me, how do preparations for the trial fare?"

Quistis shrugged her shoulders a little. "We're as ready as we're going to be. Everything should be in order."

Edea nodded. "Cid would be proud…of all of you."

Quistis blinked back tears at Edea's unexpected compliment. "Thank you." Being here was still too raw…the sunlight on the walls still carried too much pain….seemed too out of place. How could she explain to Edea that she had seen Cid in her dreams…that he had walked into an ocean and that his last thoughts had been of her, or how much he loved her?

Folding her hands, Edea stared down at the table top, her shoulders shaking slightly.

Quistis was snapped out of her own thoughts, and she reached across the table to place her hand over Edea's. The woman's hands were cold and wrinkled slightly with age, and Quistis became acutely aware of just how old Edea had become. "What is it, Matron?"

The older woman looked up, tears shining in her dark eyes. "I was just thinking…that the reigns have passed to you, now. In time…I hope you will forgive Cid and I for these burdens."

Quistis' gaze was level. "There is nothing to forgive. You and Cid gave us a home. You gave us each other. Home and family…is more than we would have had without you."

Edea let her words, so similar to Seifer's sink in before she spoke again.

Edea smiled, weakly. "You are very kind, Quistis. You have always been…very kind." She looked across the table to her surrogate daughter, appreciating the wisdom in her blue eyes and the bearing she knew weighed heavily on her shoulders.

Meanwhile, Quistis offered her matron a smile, soft with the submission of a child and the assurance of a grown and capable woman, a woman that Edea knew would take her place when she was gone and in many ways already had.

She swallowed her grief, then, tucked it back into the shadowed corners that those who know death keep all too well and clasped Quistis' hand. "Shall we walk by the water before the ceremony? The children have been wanting to meet you, all of you."

Cid, fading into the water. Cid, thinking of Edea as he passed beyond the deep waves…

**He likes it when you come to the water.**

Quistis closed her eyes for a moment until the shadow passed. "Yes. Let's go there now."

**…**

**…**

"Into the earth, I walk in shadow, but let all mortal shadows stray from my heart-"

It was a sunny, peaceful morning…the kind he would have enjoyed.

Ceranian willows whispered softly in the breeze as it fanned its delicate breath against the ocean waters, leaving ripples in its wake. The ocean was oddly calm, and lapped softly at the beach, bathed in the first crimson hues of sunrise.

"Flesh and bone to fire and air, sight to sleep and oblivion. In each ending we find a beginning, and in each grief we find comfort."

She could almost see him walking along the shoreline, his pants rolled up and clutching his brown loafers, shirt untucked…

But no. That was only a dream. It was a dream of a different ocean, infinite miles away from the one she stood on now. She turned her gaze away from the water.

"Fallible flesh to lux eterna…"

Thousands had gathered, and now faced the waters behind the small orphanage, a sea of black-clad figures staring solemnly out to sea. Quistis let her eyes rove over the crowd, skimming over the familiar faces and taking some comfort in the fact that her grief was shared.

Edea stood at the Hynian priest's side, her face obscured by a dark veil. Squall and Rinoa were also up near the front, and Quistis could see the bright sheen of tears on Rinoa's pale cheeks. Squall looked impassive as always, but Quistis read his grief in the way he gripped Rinoa's hand, a rare public show of affection.

Xu, Serabin, and Davin Korbeil all flanked Edea's left, hands folded behind their backs and looking somber. Quistis knew their standing together was as much a show of Garden unity for the coming trial in a few hours as anything else, seeing as the press had managed to squeeze one or two bugs into the funeral guest list. Occasionally, a camera flash went off—they were hardly being subtle about it. All the new headmasters wore a black sash across their breast, as well as the one the rest of the crowd wore around their arms.

Grief. She could feel it in all of them, woven tightly so as not to spill over. It weighed them into the grass, so that with each wind that picked up, it would not carry their hearts along with the many already lost. Quistis recognized the usefulness of grief, and its application as an anchor in troubled times, but she could not yet give reign to hers. Not yet.

She glanced to her own right, were Irvine, Selphie, Arya and Zell were all standing. Irvine had his arm around both her and Selphie, and Quistis was grateful for the support. She leaned heavily on Irvine's shoulder, grasping Selphie's hand and squeezing.

The Hynian priest waved his staff in the direction of the water. "All my battles being fought, I lay my weary arms to rest-"

"It falls to you, Quistis."

Why me? Why not Squall? Even now she could not understand…did not want to understand…

"Flesh and bone to dust and air…."

You were in a coma, Quistis. What you dreamt of was only shadows of a life.

But…when I went into the water…I wanted to go. I would have, if something hadn't hauled me back-

"And so I walk thought the valley and I swim through the streams, a thing of air and ash, a creature of wind and fire-"

Dreams…the voices in the water…

No. They were real. They were…waiting.

Quistis' somber blue gaze fell out onto the water, where thousands of candles were floating in memory of those lost. Each candle burned dimly in the bloody dawn, bobbing gently on the lapping waves. She focused her sight on one straying from the large cluster, slowly bobbing out to sea. Tied with a red ribbon…she had tied it herself.

Seifer. Always alone.

"Let me release my sorrows and my pain, let me walk in the light and ebb gently back into the slumber of time, where all pain is erased, where all tears are ended…let me cross this bridge to light through death's brief darkness-"

The priest's voice droned on, and she could feel nothing but the ebb and fall of the ocean. The very rhythm was anchored in her bones.

"Let me release my flesh into the water's memory-"

At this, Edea raised the small sliver urn and uncapped it, and they all watched as Cid's ashes floated out toward the water, spiraling in the wind before disappearing into the waves.

Quistis stared ahead, trying hard to blink back tears.

Cid Kramer was gone….and all that remained of his legacy were the orphans of a war-torn world, scattered across the sandy plain.

They were alone. They had always been alone.

They had once been able to take comfort in Cid's leadership, believing that in some way he would protect them. That he would make sure everything would be in order. That he would take them in, no matter what…that Garden would protect them under his small but stable power. This was not true. Cid had been a man, vast in his intentions but limited in his abilities. In the end, however, he had given them the greatest gift of all; he had given them each other.

"Though the flesh has faded, the memory remains. Per aspera ad astra, omnes una magna nox-"

Quistis kept her gaze fixed on the water.

Goodbye, Cid. I'll see you again.

The priest stepped back, bowing as he did so. "The widow Kramer has asked that Squall Leonhart speak to you all today on Cid's behalf."

Squall looked up into the crowd, and without preamble, began to speak.

"Death is an altering force. It leaves the world around us diminished in a capacity that we can't see, or taste, or touch. It changes us, and so, though us, it changes our world." Squall cleared his throat, putting his one good arm behind his back. The other arm was now set in a cast, concealed partially by his jacket. "We have buried a father today. We have buried sisters, and brothers, and lovers, and surrogate parents, and it is now, more than ever, that we wonder at the cost of living. We wonder at the cost of loving. We wonder at the cost of being brothers, and sisters, and lovers, and, most of all, the cost of being soldiers."

"And I know some of you have come here, today, looking for answers. You want me to tell you that somehow, this is all worth it. That everything will be all right. And I'm sorry…I can't tell you that. I won't. You'll have to answer that yourselves."

A low murmur echoed through the crowd.

"But I can say this. Cid gave us a family. He gave us a home, a home unlike what many of us were used to. Today we bury a soldier…and a father, a husband, and a friend, and we are left with his dream. It is in the dream that the fallen soldier lives, and where he will continue to live. It's our dream now, if we want it. Cid Kramer can live on, if we want him to."

He paused.

"None of us are born soldiers. It is a mold that casts us, not a mold that we decide for ourselves. It is a road that chooses us as much as it is chosen. A soldier lives life on the edge of a second- each moment that lasts beyond that second is a gift, and one we must cherish with those we love while time is granted us. All of us will die. Some of us will die soon. Today, tomorrow. It doesn't matter- it's inevitable.

Therefore, it is not how we die, but how we live, that matters most this moment and the next. The brevity in which one's flame is lit and extinguished out does not determine the strength of one's flame while it burns.

In the next few weeks, you will have to make a decision, to stay at Garden or to leave it. The costs have become too much for some. For those of you go, know that you go with Cid's blessing, and an honorable discharge. For those of you who stay, it will be a hard beginning. Labor to rebuild is going to be voluntary. As for me, I've made my decision. This is my home. You all have your own decisions to make. I can't promise you that everything will be all right, but I can promise you that we will face the future together. The only certain thing about our future is those who love us…those who choose to face it with us."

Tears fell silently from Rinoa's eyes, as she stood next to him, and she bowed her head. Quistis knew that Squall's last comment had been directed at her.

The wind picked up across the water, stirring the candles across the waters and shattering the light on the waves. Many of the spectators closed their eyes.

Squall looked out at all of them, his eyes a curious mixture of grief and determination. "We passed the gates of Balamb Garden knowing that it could be our lives, our blood, and our desires to pay for the air that others breathe. A real soldier's glories are simple and his trials are great: the laughter of children, and the fall of nations. Cid once told me that a soldier's trial is that we had to crawl through the worst parts of humanity to preserve the best. He told me that a soldier is very like a butterfly, a changeling figure who enters a tiny, ignorant worm and molds itself tirelessly to the mechanical ministrations of order and discipline and becomes something greater than human. These men, these women have become their last form. Their hearts beat beneath our feet. If we grieve them too long…if we refuse to feel the sunshine or to feel the warm wind against our backs, then they have died for nothing. But if you live…" he paused, "…then they live with you. Ad astra per aspera, omnes una magna nox."

To the stars through the thorns…the same night awaits us all.

Silence as the large group before him bowed their heads in respect.

After a few moments, Squall looked up, expecting the crowds to have dispersed.

Not a single soul had moved.

One of the young men stirred. "Your orders, commander?"

Squall looked like he was torn between astonishment and sentiment. For a moment, Quistis thought he might cry, but the moment quickly passed, and his face returned to its normal mask. "Get on the boats to Esthar, and await the trial results," he said. "There will be still be rooms available for Balamb. After the trial, our fate will be decided, and we move from then."

The crowds began to disperse, and Quistis wandered towards the water, where the saltwater willows dipped their graceful limbs into the small tidal pools that gathered there in the early morning. The pools were warmed by the sun, filled with crabs and starfish that they had once gleefully harvested as children. That time seemed an eternity away now.

She gazed towards the water, where the others were gathering, solemnly watching as one by one, the candle flames dimmed to nothing in the calm, caressing lips of the waves.

It would be time to go to Esthar soon. Time to face the Supreme Council. Time to do what Cid had asked of her.

She walked barefoot towards the edge of the grassy dune, shoes in hand as the thin blades of grass tickled her ankles. There, underneath the largest willow tree, there lay an unmarked grave, one from which no earth had been dug. One that held no body.

The stone was engraved in the old tongue, taken from the Book of Hyne. She knelt before the small stone, tracing her fingertips over the engraving.

Pulvis et umbra sumus

Ad astra per aspera.

Ad augusta per augusta.

Salus

Ad vitam aeternam…

We are dust and shadow

To the stars through the thorns

To high places through narrow roads

Salvation

For all time…

Quistis sighed into the breeze, feeling a numb kind of peace flow over her.

Her fingers curled as an unexpected wave of pain shot through her arms and she leaned hard against the tree, sucking her breath through her teeth as it passed. The phantom flashes came occasionally, jerking through her arms like a stalled current. Ghost magic. Quistis supposed it was her body's way of casting out the pain, the agony that she had slept through those long days.

She pressed her hand to her lips, and with a shaking arm, pressed her fingertips to the cold stone.

One last kiss.

"Goodbye, Seifer Almasy." She whispered, tears slipping down her cheeks.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Quistis. It's time to go." She turned, and met the solid, grey-blue gaze that had greeted her from her coma.

Squall.

Squall, offering her his arm.

Something had changed between them, something deep and unspoken. He was…protective of her now, overtly so, a constant shadow in her step, as if he were afraid that she would disappear.

She nearly had, after all.

He stood before her, his commander's metals clinking together in the wind, his metal blue eyes finally filled with the affection she had tried so hard to wring from him as a child. Since the what some were now calling Third Sorceress war, Squall had been more open with his affections, and with his feelings. For someone as repressed as Squall, this mean he showed them occasionally, like a fish flashing the white of his belly in dark depths. As he watched the truths world unfold around him, Squall was beginning to realize that withholding his feelings for others would not prevent those he cared for from being taken away, and that holding people at arm's length for the time that he had them would not make their loss any less painful. Squall, like the rest of them, was growing older, growing wiser, and though perhaps not better for it, growing up.

His brown hair tangled in the wind, and she knew this is how she wanted to remember him forever. Young and proud, stoic and stubborn. A true soldier. Her brother. Her friend.

"Are you ready, Quistis?" Concern in his expression.

Rinoa's words came to mind.

Protect them. Protect him.

She straightened, wiping her sleeve quickly across her face. "Yes, of course." The Ragnarok loomed in the distance, waiting to take them to Esthar. She threaded his arm with hers, leaning slightly against them as they climbed the small incline.

She did not look back.

…

…

After Seifer had dressed, he found the sword smith waiting for him in the main room.

"Come with me," he said, then turned to go outside.

The first thing Seifer noticed was a giant blue chocobo standing calmly in the middle of the lawn. Glyphias.

"You let him out," said Seifer, surprised. "I thought for sure he'd run away."

"No. That bird's nothing but bluster. Only pretends not to like it here, like someone else I know."

Seifer looked closer, and noticed that the overgrown chicken was staring expectantly at him, dressed in the same bridle and sadle that Masa's war books had shown.

Masa squinted. "Take Glyph with you. Bird hates everyone else but you, anyway."

Seifer frowned. "Yeah, about that. I'm pretty sure he wants to kill me, actually."

"You don't know much about Chocobos, do you?" Masa rolled his eyes. "Hold out your hand to him."

Seifer looked over at the sword smith like he was insane. "Are you kidding me?"

Masa folded his arms. "Hold out your hand."

"No way."

"Are you afraid?"

Odd how that playground taunt never ceased to work on him.

"Fine, but you owe me a new hand when he bites this one off," replied Seifer, wincing as he stretched out his hand towards the large bird.

"WARK!"

Sure enough, the large Chocobo craned back his neck and dove for Seifer's hand, beak opened to crush the bones-

Just as suddenly, Glyph's head came to a halt, capturing Seifer's wrist in his huge beak and firmly but gently taking it into his mouth. The bird squeezed, and Seifer could feel the bones in his hand bending under the pressure. Abruptly, the pressure stopped.

"Wark!" This sound was softer…almost affectionate.

"You see, Seifer Almasy? Not all trust is foolish."

Seifer opened his eyes, amazed to be staring at his hand and not a bloody stump.

Glyph was staring at him, head cocked and making a low rumble in his throat, like the bird version of a purr. If he didn't know better, he'd have to say that the bird was having a laugh at his expense.

"See? I told you. He likes you. All show."

Seifer looked closer and saw that the chocobo had been fitted with a chest harness, and a large pack was secured to his back. "Food in there for three days," said Masa. "Glyphius knows his way down the mountain."

"But this is-"

"Your Chocobo now. For services rendered." Glyph turned to Seifer, and let out a loud, "WARK!", as he scratched at the snow.

"But you said-"

"That I did not accept payment for my services. I said nothing of paying others for theirs. I have no use for money or obstinate chocobos on this mountain."

"Uh..." What the hell was he supposed to do with a chocobo once he got it down the mountain? Still, he understood that Masa was only trying to be nice. And, Glyph was pretty cool, he supposed. Scary, but cool.

"What am I supposed to do with him…you know, once I get down?" asked Seifer.

Masa shrugged. "That is up to Glyphius."

"Here." Masa glanced over at him and pressed an object into his palm. "A memento. An echo of the dead."

Seifer looked down into his palm to see a chunk of Hyperion's metal, twisted with a hint of gold into a thick band. Hyperion…Helios…and his mother's ring.

"Better now this way. Her metal makes yours stronger, see?"

"All your life, you fight. Even now." Chu's words. "You are perhaps your mother's son, then, eh?"

"…thanks," said Seifer, at a loss for words. Somehow, it wasn't just a ring….it was an affirmation of the good that could be…that once was in him. He jammed it onto his pinky finger, where it was snug.

Masa's eyes sparkled. "Give it to someone special, eh?"

He had no heart to remind the man that everyone special in his life was lost to him.

Seifer shouldered Helios onto his back, looking down at the valley below him. Trabia's freezing temperatures had abated somewhat in celebration of spring, and the wind carried a hint of warmth instead of its usual poignant bite. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon. There was a storm coming.

He turned to Masa, whose scarred face was upturned to the sky, a strange smile on his face.

Seifer had never been good at goodbyes…they always made him feel like was losing someone forever, and it was almost always true. And so he quickly climbed onto Glyph's back, steadying himself.

Masa nodded his head. "You will come back and visit." It was a statement, not a question. And with that, he slapped Glyph's hind end, sending the Chocobo into a gallop.

He didn't know what else to say. Frankly, no other words could do justice to what the old man had done for him. And so, as the Chocobo hurtled down the first crest, he raised his hand and waved.

Growing farther away, he could see the wise old giant raise his hand…and wave back.

Riding a Chocobo was like nothing Seifer had ever experienced before. The down of the Chocobo feathers were as warm as three layers of animal skins- Glyph's wings folded over his legs and pressed him against his sides, warming and securing them. It was a good thing, too, otherwise he was pretty sure he would have fallen on his ass the second the huge Chocobo moved.

Seifer faded in and out of consciousness on the way down, slumping in his sitting position into a sleeping hunch. He did not bother to steer, as Masa had said Glyph knew the way, and he could barely see ahead of him. Every so often, he reached into the pack to chew on some of the jerky that Masa had packed for him or to sip from the canteen, but mostly he tried to see through the snow and steer the Chocobo down the mountain.

Hours into the journey, the storm had gotten so thick that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. The Chocobo, however, seemed to know where he was going. Glyph's eyes were shielded from the blistering winds by a thin membrane of protective skin, so the Chocobo simply lowered his head and charged down the craggy cliffs, not stopping but seeming to weave through the tundra like a fish through water. He found himself lulled to sleep more than once by the smooth rhythm of the Chocobo's stride, and after awhile, stopped trying to stay awake.

He woke up sore and squinting through a strange mixture of snow and sunlight. Glyph was breathing hard, his head lowered as his powerful legs lunged the pair of them forward. No sooner did the Chocobo round a familiar hill than a similarly familiar figure came into view. Chu was standing expectantly, arms folded, in the exact same position that Seifer had left him weeks ago. Why that didn't surprise him, he couldn't say.

Chu quirked an eyebrow as he approached, a strange smile hinting at the corners of his lips, the same Masa had worn.

That same, knowing smile.

"Took you long enough!"

…

…

Quistis Trepe had never liked flying. There was something fundamentally unnatural about a 2 ton craft sweeping through the clouds, defying both ground and gravity.

Either that, or there was something fundamentally unnatural about Selphie's flying.

Cerberus, however, didn't seem bothered by the plane. He was sitting at her feet with his head in her lap, watching the clouds go by and occasionally growling at the ones that ventured too close to the ship for his liking.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?"

Quistis turned and lifted an eyebrow at Xu, who was just sitting down to buckle herself in. She'd been walking around the ship for the past hour, presumably going over trial preparations with Squall and making calls to the Trabian and Galbadian headmasters, confirming court times and statements. Some would be worn under the strain of coordinating so many different efforts, but Xu fairly shone. She had been an excellent choice for Headmaster: she was driven, tenacious, and steadfast. She was also too nosey for her own damned good.

"As usual, I have no idea what you're talking about." She replied simply, glaring at her best friend.

Xu rolled her eyes. "Don't give me that. I know that look of yours. You were daydreaming."

Quistis rolled her eyes, running her hand over Cerberus' broad head. The large dog let out a satisfied growl in response, and gave up cloud-watching to lean into his master's hand. "Don't you have better things to do than monitor my sleeping habits?" asked Quistis.

"Not for the next seven hours, no." Ramming the heel of her hand into her jaw, Xu deftly cracked her neck. Quistis winced at the sound. "You know, Serabin's going to be at the trial."

Here we go again.

"Yes, I know."

"He's asked about you. How you're doing."

Quistis didn't respond, but turned to look back out the window.

"And?" Xu raised an eyebrow.

"And, what?" asked Quistis, irritated.

Xu was not deterred. In fact, in the last few months, Xu had pressed her friend's normally uncontested walls more than usual, irritating her out of her emotional cage. Quistis understood her friend's good intentions even if at the same time, she resented them. Now, however, after Cid's wake, her emotions were raw, and she simply wanted to retreat back into the same corner that had granted her shelter all those years ago- the numb, distant shadows of her past.

"And, Serabin's got a lot going for him," persisted Xu. "Maybe you should think about what he can offer you."

Quistis's gaze was cold. "Well, I don't have a lot to offer him," she snapped, continuing to absently stroke Cerberus behind the ears as she once again turned back and glared out the window.

Xu grit her teeth in frustration. "You can't-"

"I can't **what**, Xu?" snapped Quistis, turning from the window, her eyes narrowed into slits.

Xu's sighed. It was Quistis that had comforted her after Cid's death…Quistis that had awoke from her coma to find her family unraveling. It was Quistis that bore the weight of that emotion…the same Quistis that had not shed a single tear of her own in front of anyone since she awoke.

You can't keep this all inside.

You can't hold all this in forever.

You can't be strong for all of us all of the time.

The anger in her friend's eyes faded as quickly as it had come, however, and her shoulders sagged. "I'm sorry Xu. I suppose I'm just…"

"…tired." Finished Xu, her voice uncharacteristically temperate. "Then sleep, Quistis."

Xu fully expected an argument, and was astonished when her friend smiled, sadly, and turned back to the window. In a few moments, her eyes had slipped shut, and Cerberus had resumed 'cloud watch'.

Xu watched her friend sleep, a gentle look on her normally stoic face.

Sleep, Quistis. Let someone else watch over the world for awhile.

…

…

…

"Where in the hell are we going, anyway?"

Chu glanced behind him. "I told you, for walk. What it look like we are doing? Pull taffy? Knit sweater?"

The old man, like Seifer, was wrapped in warm furs with and strapped to a pair of homemade snow shoes. Unlike Seifer, however, the little old geiser didn't sink beneath the snow crust, and seemed to glide along the surface, whereas Seifer had been knee-deep from the beginning. The two had been trekking for over an hour now, and Seifer found himself grow more impatient with every step.

Seifer grit his teeth. "So you've said. But where are we walking to?"

"Bah!" With a wave of his gloved hand, Chu turned around and kept walking. "So impatient! Best journeys taken with no direction in mind."

"Yeah, if you're senile and trying to waste time," muttered Seifer. Chu had insisted that Seifer bring Helios with him, and the blade strap was beginning to cut into his shoulder. He hadn't lifted the blade since his return, much to Chu's frustration, and no amount of pestering, locking out, or plate throwing on Chu's part could make him do it.

In the pack that Masa had given him, Seifer had found not only dried meat and a canteen of water, but more gil than he had ever seen in his life. He had counted the coins and the bills several times, and concluded that there was well over half a million gil in the packs. Baffled, he'd asked Chu why Masa had given him the money, and the old man had shrugged, saying that Masa had little use for money and always repaid his debts.

Seifer had found a fire Draw point along the way, and equipped himself with a few of the spells. There was no reason he had to freeze to death, and if push came to shove, he could always use Chu's stubborn corpse to keep himself warm for a few hours. He entertained himself with the thought as they walked.

Seifer had stuck Glyph in the cabin for some much-deserved rest, figuring the bird could do no worse damage to the dilapidated shack. Now, he almost wished he'd dragged the ornery blue canary along. His feet were killing him in these stupid over-sized tennis rackets.

Chu stopped suddenly in front of him, and Seifer nearly barreled into him.

"Ah, yes. We've arrived."

"Arrived where? In the middle of nowhere? We didn't need to walk a hundred fucking miles to get nowhere. We could have stayed where we were and been there already." Snapped Seifer.

The old man ignored his tirade, and stared gleefully into the distance. Seifer looked ahead to see what the old man saw, and immediately took a step back.

There, in the clearing, was a group of adolescent Ruby Dragons crowding a large Wendigo carcass, clawing and snapping at one another in bursts of fiery snarls.

"Are you nuts?" hissed Seifer, but Chu simply held up his hand for silence, his dark eyes trained to the scene. One Ruby dragon was more than enough to deal with on your own…but five young adults was suicide.

"I kill the Wendigo days ago. They find it, at last." Said the old man, smiling. "Ah, excellent timing. Here he comes."

That was it. The old man had finally snapped. Seifer's thoughts were cut off, however, as the sound of wings flapped overhead. Seifer looked up to find that "He" turned out to be a white dragon descending on the small group of dragons, announcing his presence with a challenging roar. The dragon was large for a Ruby Dragon, but bore all the similar markings. Thin wing branches, an exaggerated skull crest, and elongated front legs…but it was albino white.

Was it the one he and Masa had watched? Impossible…Seifer squinted.

The smaller dragons looked up, scattering as the larger dragon landed in the middle of the fray, fire spewing from its mouth like a crimson foam. Snarling, the other dragons immediately jumped back, save one, who foolishly tried to face off the older dragon, lunging at its throat. In less than a second, the larger dragon had pinned it with its long forearms and craned its neck to snap its massive jaws around the neck of the fledgling, severing the head with one clean snap. The young ruby dragon's body twitched, then lay still, spurting steaming blood into the now sullied snow.

"Fuck." Muttered Seifer. Peering closer, he could see that the dragon was covered in a puzzle of old scars, some of them quite large. Well-muscled, eyes a sharp shade of ruby. This dragon was a veteran. This dragon was intelligent.

This dragon was the same one that he'd seen on Masa's mountain, skimming the skies from time to time. It was his dragon, the one he had watched for hours from the snowy roof. What had Masa called it?

The White Wind.

Chu chuckled. "Hai, he is quite old, ne?"

"I guess. I've seen it on Masa's mountain, before," replied Seifer. "So why the hell are we here?"

"You're going to kill it."

Seifer scoffed. "Like hell I am."

Chu gestured at the large dragon, shouting down at the massive beast. "Vae victis!"

Woe to the conquered!

The dragon lifted its massive head at the noise, red eyes swiveling to fix upon the pair atop the hill. Narrowing its eyes, it let out an earsplitting roar, Wendigo flesh dripping from its jaws.

"Perhaps this will make you lift sword arm."

Seifer stared at the old man, baffled. Had he cracked another screw loose while he'd been gone?

Chu gestured towards the dragon with his staff. "Aut vincere aut mori. A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi, Almasy."

No. He'd knocked them all loose.

"Ne feceris ut rideam…" muttered Seifer.

But the dragon was already starting for them, clearly regarding them as a challenge to his territory and his meal. As far as Seifer was concerned, the stupid beast could have the rotting Wendigo and the whole damned frozen mountains.

As far as the dragon was concerned, Seifer and Chu were small, noisy pieces of meat.

Chu had already settled himself into the snow, crossing his legs and placing hands over his knees.

Seifer moved to draw his sword, then stopped. "I don't want to kill it." He said, taking a step back. "It hasn't done shit to me."

Chu just smiled, manically. "It's about to." Seifer considered moving and leaving Chu in the path of the dragon, but couldn't bring himself to do it. There was a fey quality about the old man lately, a resolution that Seifer couldn't quite understand. It was as if Chu had aged more in the last few months than in the three years he had known him.

"Morituri te salutant." Muttered Seifer wryly, moving to draw his sword. He needed to move out of the way. Chu was in no position to get up, and at the rate it was going, it could trample him. Seifer shuffled to the side, going further down the hell and meeting the dragon halfway. He moved to draw his sword, and braced his feet.

The dragon was faster than he had figured, and before he could draw Helios the rest of the way, the dragon had slammed into him, sending him sprawling clear across the field. He could see one of his snowshoes flying, on fire, in a graceful burning arc. It landed in the snow, still burning as it protruded.

He drew in a pained breath, rolling over into a standing position only to lurch to the side as a wave of flame missed him by inches.

"You fucking-" Seifer dodged to the side again as the beast once again tried to immerse him in flame. The dragon lunched, and Seifer kicked out with his foot, catching the monster in the face with the snowshoe. The dragon snarled and snapped at it, splintering the wood and nearly catching Seifer's foot in the process. He really needed to put some distance between him and the dragon. "Crazy old man!" he shouted, once he got enough air in his lungs to finish a sentence. "Are you trying to fucking kill me?" With a sweep of his arm, he managed to draw Helios the rest of the way- and nearly toppled over with the weight.

Chu cracked open an eye. "No. He is."

Seifer turned again, stumbling back as the angry dragon flapped its wings at him, sending another gust that nearly dropped him over. He stumbled, then promptly stuck his sword into the ground. Digging in his feet, he lunged forward on the blade and dodged to the side.

"Qvae nocent docent," called Chu, shouting from the hill.

Seifer dodged again and attempted a swipe at the dragon as it lunged forth, jaws snapping and spewing the terrible odor of rotting meat. Staggering back, Seifer's arm managed a clumsy arc upwards, a defensive swipe. The dragon jerked its head back, and proceeded to draw in a breath in anticipation of another burst of fire.

"A little help here!" shouted Seifer, praying to Hyne for a freak asteroid to strike the damned beast in the head…or Chu.

Whichever.

"Perfect battle! Two most stubborn creatures on mountain!" Laughing, the old man closed his eyes again, apparently meditating.

Helios weight was too heavy…too new. His crippled arm sagged under the weight, and even the support of his other arm did nothing to help.

"Fuck!"

Gritting his teeth, he once again brought up the sword, drawing it around in a side-arc and catching the dragon across the side of the snout. Blood sprayed across the snow, and the dragon shrieked, staggering back and swiping at its face. In the next instant, it spun, thwacking Seifer in the chest with its tail. The breath flew out of him once more, and he flew across the snowy field, landing in a sea of white powder.

This is like that damned Marlboro fight, he thought ruefully, and he struggled to sit, spitting his own blood onto the snow as he gasped for breath, managing little more than a croaking sound. He stretched out his arm, fingers curled in front of the approaching enemy. "Fira!"

The flame streamed out, catching the dragon in the face with a loud, hissing roar. As the dragon's belly was made of mostly flame anyway, the magic had little effect on it. The beast simply ducked its head and continued its charge, lowering its crest to impale him. He rolled quickly again, trying to see through the cloud of white. Something knocked him back again, and he looked down to see that his jacket had been slashed open, having caught only the tip of the blow. Just in time, he managed to bring his sword up just as the dragon's fangs snapped at his face, catching the blade instead. More blood gushed down onto the jacket as the dragon buried its gums on the blade, shrieking. Instead of drawing back, however, the pain incensed the creature, and it snapped harder, clawing closer. More blood spurted from the dragon's gums, and soon Seifer could not see for the blood in his eyes. The beast narrowed its eyes and pressed closer, forcing Seifer's already shaking arms down. Soon, Seifer would have his own sword buried in his neck. The dragon's crushing weight was on his legs, making moving impossible. He stared up into glowing eyes, and found his own will to live pushing at his chest. Gripping the blade handle, he twisted it, causing the blade to bury itself even deeper into the dragon's gums. More blood washed over him, sloshing onto his face and blurring his vision.

Shreiking, the dragon snapped its head back, stumbling back and arching its head towards the sky, shrieked with pain. Its long, white throat was exposed, and Seifer brought the sword back, putting all his power behind it as he drove it into the dragon's chest.

Screaming, the blade embedded in its heart and spilling brilliant dark blood onto the bright, pure surface of the hill, the ruby dragon stumbled back, the sword still sticking from its chest. Flame poured from its mouth, but the breath stalled and it staggered, snarling, defiant, its ruby eyes fixed towards the grey sky as it tumbled over. After a moment, it no longer moved, and Seifer relaxed, sinking back into the snow.

He did not move from his position on the ground, staring at the same grey sky and trying to catch his breath. He did not know where Chu was, and secretly hoped the crazy old fool had spontaneously combusted.

His chest was killing him. Adrenaline ran hot in his veins, pumping through his arms and making him dizzy with the feeling of being alive. The dragon's blood was wet and warm against his own skin.

"Ah! So you can wield sword after all, idiot!" Suddenly, Chu's grinning face appeared above him, blocking his view. "Just stubborn!"

Seifer frowned, angry. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" he panted. "I didn't want to fight the thing in the first place!"

"Masa taught you well, I see." The old man glanced behind him. "That feeling in your veins? Righteousness." Chu glanced over at the dragon. "It was a good death." He said, nodding. "A good fight."

"I used to think…you were nuts." Muttered Seifer, still gasping for breath. "Now I see…."

Chu smiled at him.

"…you're….completely fucking insane."

…

…

…

In the many years that Seifer would know Chu, he would never understand him. The man was insightful one moment, demented the next.

The man was also as abrupt as a Trabian snowstorm.

It was in the spirit of this abruptness (and perhaps a little dementia) that Chu woke him up one morning with an elbow to the stomach, telling him it was time to leave. Seifer replied with a muffled obscenity and pulled a pillow over his head.

The old man was not deterred. Seifer let out a grunt as Helios' oppressive weight was dumped onto his stomach. "Time to go," the old man announced as he walked out of the cabin, "You go home now."

Home? Where the fuck was that?

Seifer cracked open an eye. "What, you're throwing me out?"

Chu poked his head in. "Snow melting. Get ass moving. Time to go."

Rubbing his hand over his face, Seifer reluctantly dipped his feet over the side of the mouse-ridden mattress to focus his eyes on the room, worming his feet into his boots and pulling on a shirt.

On one of the remaining chairs, Seifer noticed a white coat draped over his other clothing. Picking it up, he ran the pad over his thumb over one of the sleeves. Leather. Soft, white leather. The coat was cut like the old, grey nightmare that had eventually rotted off of him, except for the coloring and the fact that a red cross was cut down the center of the coat, the horizontal fork cutting over to spread across his arms, much like the tattoo on his back.

He shrugged the coat on, rolling his shoulders. Perfect fit. A pair of soft leather gloves were also laid out next to the jacket, the leather worn to a soft, supple texture.

Frowning, he pulled them on with his other clothes, grabbing Helios and pulling the sword scabbard over his shoulder, the tongues still flapping out of his boots. He was not, nor did he ever hope to be, a morning person, and considered all activities conducted before sunrise an act of torture. Chu, however, was immune to this line of thinking, and routinely beat him awake before the sun came up.

Outside, both Chu and Glyph were waiting, and Seifer was surprised to see how much of the snow had melted, reducing the mountain to a partially snowy, but mostly soggy, mess. The chocobo had already been tethered, and two small leather packs were slung under its wings.

Chu grinned, slapping him on the back. "I see you find coat."

"Yeah…thanks."

"No thanks from me!" The old man laughed. "A gift from White Wind!"

Seifer rolled his eyes. His real 'gifts' from the white dragon were still healing.

Chu folded his arms. "Where you go now?"

They'll have buried all the dead by now. They'll have buried...her.

But where?

There should be a memorial at Esthar...shouldn't there? I'll go there first. I want to put the ring on her grave. I want to tell her…

Flowers… she should have flowers. White flowers.

I want to tell her...I want to say goodbye.

Esthar, then.

He looked over at Chu. "Balamb…Esthar…I don't know. There's someone that I want to say goodbye to."

"Ah." Chu's eyes were sparkling. "Remember what I say, Seifer Almasy. Hoshi wa te ni korobanai. Hoshi wo toraete ne? You must catch her."

He'd told Chu a million times that Quistis was dead. He, like Masa, seemed to have particular amnesia where she was concerned.

He wished he were so lucky.

"Yeah, I'll remember," he muttered.

The old man responded by cracking him upside the head with his stick one last time for good measure. "You better!"

"Damnit old man!" Rubbing his head and muttering to himself, Seifer climbed up onto Glyph's back. "Thanks for everything," he said, rubbing his head. "I think."

"Via cruces." Said Chu solemnly, raising his hand in farewell. "I shall see you again, Seifer Almasy."

Glyph took off, his long legs pumping as his neck strained forward, hurtling down the mountain like a loose blue cannon. Seifer, for his part, dug in his legs and did his best to hang on. For an instant, as he turned to wave goodbye, he thought he saw…a glimmer of something in the old man's dark eyes.

A shimmer of ruby, powerful and familiar, a light that seemed to pierce him with the force of memory.

Where had he seen it before?

Just like that, however, it was gone, and the figure of the old man had disappeared down the hill.

Seifer turned forward, and pulled his hood down over his eyes. For some reason, he didn't feel sad. He thought of Chu's words.

I shall see you again.

He didn't doubt it.

He knew, somehow, he would see both Chu and Masa again.

…

…

…

Balamb. The word alone used to be enough to cover his tongue in a bitter taste.

But this time…was different. Balamb had changed…or maybe he had, he wasn't sure, and he found he no longer cared.

The streets seemed brighter and busier, and the people's expressions seemed…less hostile. Their faces were lit with curiosity rather than the bitter condemnation he was used to seeing. This, of course, was probably because they didn't recognize him- there had been no beauticians on the mountain and he was sure he resembled the Wild Man of Trabia more than Seifer Almasy, ex-war criminal.

The Balamb hotel loomed up ahead, and he gave a baffled (and frightened) valet Glyph's reigns and checked into a seaside room. He looked at the room service pamphlet and ordered a large meal before hopping into the shower. It was time to shave and get a change of clothes that didn't consist of several dead animals, and time to check out the local realty and see if anything cheap was available for rent. As for a job, well…he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. He had heard that the local fishing industry was always hiring help to unload the boats onto the docks, if nothing else.

Wrapped in a hotel towel and smelling better than he had in months, he peeled back the maroon curtains to gaze out at the sunset that spilled across the water.

Time to think of the future, if indeed men like him were supposed to have futures at all.

…

…

The Esthar Inn was uncharacteristically quiet. The Balamb soldiers who had chosen to stay, following Squall's orders, had arrived by ship less than an hour ago, and had all promptly returned to their hotel rooms to sleep.

The door to Esthar Inn Suite 228C, however, was a rather noisy exception.

The Balamb Heroes were sprawled out across the twin beds, a mass of arms, legs, and tiny hotel liquor bottles. Even Squall had abandoned his original stern pretense of 'not drinking the night before the trial', and indulged in several of Irvine's 'vodka surprises' himself. Both Squall and Xu seemed to recognize the plain truth: the work for the trial was finished and no more could be done in preparation. The small group was overtired and overwrought. And so, in the spirit of youth and in the throes of grief, they had drank each mini bottle the hotel had to offer, and dedicated every toast to Cid, Fujin, Seifer, and their other fallen comrades. Irvine and Zell drank a toast to Gzarth, recalling their last mission, which caused everyone to laugh themselves.

Now lazy with liquor, they were content to sprawl across the flowered bedspreads and each other, giggling like the adolescents they'd never had the opportunity to be.

The 'heroes' were in a fine state. Rinoa, Zell, and Arya had all been two sheets to the wind after four large drinks, and even Xu and Irvine had submitted after six. Quistis, Squall, and Selphie, the surprising contenders for the night's heavyweights, had lasted until the bottles had run out, but had eventually shared their more lightweight counterpart's silly fate. Xu, however, had cut them off at 9, leaving them plenty of time to sober up before the trial.

Rinoa, who was sprawled out on the corner bed, her legs propped up on Zell and her head resting in Squall's lap, dissolved into another fit of giggles. "I can't hic believe that your girlfriend hic out-drank you, Irvine."

Arya, slouched between Zell and Rinoa, joined her in giggling.

"Damned right!" shouted Selphie, pumping her first into the air. "Booyaka! No one out-drinks Selphie Tilmitt!"

The short brunette promptly tipped backwards after her enthusiastic exclamation, leaving Xu to catch her before she knocked both herself and Irvine off the bed. All three of them began giggling.

Irvine was sprawled out, his arm flung over his head and his hair loose. "Rub it in, why doncha," he moaned. "My rep'tation's never gonna be the same..."

"'I doubt if it could get any worse than your reputation after the hospital, Kinneas," slurred Squall. Quistis joined him, affectionately bumped him in the shoulder, which caused the young commander to smile.

"Har har," muttered Irvine, aiming a pillow at the commander's head. Squall managed to dodge, and as a result, Rinoa took the full impact of the fluffy projectile. The sorceress fell back and lay still, her hands spread out like an inebriated starfish.

Concerned, Squall removed the pillow from his fiancé's head, only to find her giggling. Rolling his eyes, he placed it back over her head, which caused everyone else to erupt into laughter.

The rest of the night was spent remembering the moments that ordinarily, might have caused them pain- reminded them of a time that was long past and could never exist again.

"Hey, remember that time when Zell crashed the t-board into the-" Irving was laughing so hard, he couldn't finish the sentence. "-girl's bathroom-he-he couldn't get up off the-"

"Wha?" asked Arya, sitting up, as Zell cast a murderous glance all around. "What'd he do?"

Quistis put a hand over her mouth in a futile attempt to stop laughing. "It wasn't nearly as bad when he tried to cast float on that bike and he-"

"Oh, that's it!" shouted Zell, hurling a pillow at Quistis' head.

"Yeah, but none of you know about the time he chained himself to a hotdog stand, and lost the key!" chortled Arya, practically breathless with laughter. Zell picked up another pillow and chucked it at her.

"What is this, pick on Zell hour?" huffed Zell indignantly, and promptly began throwing pillows at everyone. But after awhile, he, too, dissolved into laughter.

After awhile, the group quieted down, and exhaustion mixed with unavoidable grief finally began to settle in their bones. They had buried a father today, and that knowledge would not be soon forgotten.

Xu's expression became serious, suddenly. "We should go to bed."

Squall nodded. "We have to be ready for tomorrow."

"For Cid." Echoed Quistis quietly.

Selphie nodded, and scooted to the edge of the bed, placing her hand straight out between the two mattresses. "For Cid, then."

Nodding, each of the group members placed their hand into the pile, their gaze sinking into each other's. Huddled in the hotel room, surrounded by plastic bottles from the minifridge and swaying where they sat, for a moment they resembled children playing grown-up games of war and politics than orphaned killing machines. It was their eyes however, each gaze belonging to that of a friend, and a killer, that changed the tone.

Determination. Resolve. Kinship.

They were the children of a lost era, brothers and sisters born of and during battle. Their bonds ran past flesh…ran deeper than blood. No matter what tomorrow brought, they would always have each other. That was the legacy Cid had left them. Not an army. Not a war. But each other.

"For Cid."

…

…

…

"This here is a prime piece of real estate." Said the portly little man, wringing his hands. He'd been doing that since he saw Glyph and Helios. Seifer supposed that the man didn't get many clients wearing swords…or riding Chocobos. He still found the latter pretty strange himself.

Seifer folded his arms, lifting an eyebrow. "That's odd. The sign says "condemned."

"Uh, just a synonym for fixer-upper!" chirped the man nervously. "Anyway, it's got a spacious front porch, 4 bedroom, 2 bath, tool shed and a boat shed out back. Stone fireplace-"

The inside somehow managed to be worse. A tapestry of spider webs slung along high ceilings, and the floors creaked like a 90-year old crone's spine.

Seifer frowned. "All the windows are busted."

The agent bit his lip. "It's uh, air conditioned. Nice ocean breezes-"

Seifer twisted the brass knob on the kitchen sink faucet, and with a loud groan, the faucet spat a torrent of muddy water into the basin. Seifer jumped back just in time to avoid the spray.

The agent let out a nervous back of laughter and scratched the back of his head.

The only piece of furniture left in the house was a moth-ridden couch, that, when looked at, released an unhealthy dose of dust into the already musty air.

"I'll uh, leave you to discover the other uh….riches of this hidden treasure," muttered the agent, as he quickly exited the house, swearing as the bottom step broke under his feet. He could hear a loud clang after the door shut, and ducked his head out to find that the back door had fallen off its hinges.

Great.

Seifer narrowed his eyes at the house. It was a Dolletian style two story including a third story attic with a resident mouse population that was fresh out of a grade-b horror film. The roof needed reshingling, the cabinetry inside needed replacing. Still, it had a front porch, and it was on the ocean…termites did not appear to have gotten to the hardwood floors yet. The place had promise.

Seifer walked outside. "2500 gil a month for one year, renting to own, and the Chocobo stays."

"We'll have to zone it for an agricultural type property-"

"Yeah, fine, whatever, just draw up the paperwork."

Glyph let out a loud WARK from across the yard, which made the agent jump three feet in the air…again. He'd gotten the same reaction from the people at the Trabian ferry when he'd tried to declare Glyph as carry-on luggage.

"Done." Said the agent, a little too quickly. "If you'll just come by the office, we'll draw up the paperwork and get you a livestock permit for that lovely…thing…of yours."

Hours later, Seifer sat on the rotting boards of the porch swing and watched the sun die. Glyph milled around the yard, chasing the seagulls and basking in the fading light. Seifer supposed he could make the boat shed into suitable quarters for him, if the Chocobo decided to stay.

A porch swing and a view of the ocean…just like she had dreamed. If he squinted, the huge bird looked kind of like a dog…with blue feathers…

Even though he had traveled all over the world, nothing beat a Balamb sunset. Creamy clouds spilled over the horizon, soaking up the rich oranges and purples of the dying light. It was lonely in a way that he understood…a kind of kinship that he had felt since his admission to Garden. Some nights, he used sneak out to watch the sun set over the harbors, smoking cigarettes and hanging his feet off the dock and dreaming crazy dreams.

Now, older and wiser, he carefully leaned back in the porch swing, narrowing his eyes at the sun-stained waters.

Tomorrow, he would go and see her.

Tomorrow, he would say goodbye.

The Balamb crash site in Esthar was settled in the middle of a barren grassland. A clean up crew, wearing both Estharian and Balamb uniforms, was milling around the crash site, loading the heavier fragments onto flatbeds and collecting smaller pieces in bags. The memorial was apparently a mile up.

The clean-up crew was apparently used to an audience, and basically ignored his presence. Glyph milled around somewhere in the background, chewing grass and being ornery. Seifer hoped he didn't bother any of the clean-up crew. He didn't need to deal with any disemboweled volunteers. He'd had enough trouble convincing the captain of the ship from Balamb to Esthar that the Chocobo would stay in the cargo bay, and not eat any cars.

He walked around the perimeter, lowering his dragonskin hood and looking around.

Rain everywhere…the trucks were stuck in the mud and there were soldiers everywhere, shouting. Some were running with him, trying to dredge through the mud to get to battle. Most were dragging the wounded back, shouting for help and announcing the retreat.

"The tank is advancing! Return to Balamb and hold your position!"

"The retreat has been ordered! Defend the base!"

He was calling for her, scanning the crowd for her face, pushing through the mass to try to get to the battlefield.

The Galbadian tank was advancing, and the troops were pressing their position, picking off the Balamb soldiers as they retreated. Still, a lone figure was holding their position at what remained of a firing platform, bracing themselves on the shields and opening up the guns. The person was either a hero or a fool.

Maybe both.

He kept running, only to see her pressed against the gun platform, her hair tangled in the wind and her shouting a defensive spell before the earth became a rush of fire and rain…

"QUISTIS!! QUISTIS!!"

"Seifer Almasy. So you are alive." A deep voice boomed behind him. He jumped, his jaw tightening as he recognized the owner of the voice.

Time to face my ghosts.

He turned, slowly, his expression guarded. "Rajin."

There were bags under the young man's eyes, and his muscular frame had shrunken to a lean, stretched tone- the past few months had not been good to him. Seifer remembered the old Rajin: tenacious, energetic, stubborn as a damned Wendigo and as big as a damned bus. But then, perhaps Rajin's vibrancy had only been in contrast to Fujin's stoicism. Looking at his friend now, Seifer became painfully aware of Fujin's absence…and painfully aware of the contrast she had provided for his friend.

And what now? Would Rajin try to finish what he started? He didn't move. When Rajin didn't, either, Seifer felt himself slowly relax.

Fujin would not have wanted this awkward silence between them, and curiously, it was Rajin that broke it first. "I wanted to say sorry, ya know. For the way I acted towards you. It…wasn't your fault."

Seifer turned away. "I understand what-"

"No," said Rajin firmly. "I didn't understand. I didn't want to. Dr. Kadowaki told me later-" The giant paused. "Told me how her back was all twisted up and broken, ya know. She wouldn'ta wanted to be like that. Fujin was…real proud."

"Yeah…she was." Echoed Seifer.

"So…thanks, I guess. And sorry."

Heavy silence.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Rajin.

Seifer shrugged. "I'm going to the Esthar Memorial. You going to stay with SeeD?"

Rajin shook his head. "Naw. After this, I'm leaving. Too many memories there. Ain't the same…without her, ya know?"

"Do you know where you're going?" asked Seifer.

Rajin shrugged. "Not really. I guess it doesn't much matter anymore, ya know?"

Seifer thought a moment. He remembered Fujin's gaze, pleading with him to take care of Rajin, to make him safe. He had always been the follower in the trio, an orphaned tiger too sweet to know he had claws and too dumb to figure it out. An idea struck him, and it was obvious what he had to do.

Maybe it was to lessen his grief. He would never know.

"Here." Rajin looked up just in time to catch the set of keys Seifer tossed at him. "There's a construction job there, if you want it. It's a shithole, but the rent is free, for as long as you want it. I'll be joining you, but…I've got some stuff to do, first."

Rajin looked down at the keys. "Hey…thanks, man."

The two stared out at the ruins, finding a fragile companionship in remembering a fallen friend amidst the scattered embers of a fallen dream.

"She was something, man." Said Rajin wistfully.

Seifer nodded. "Hey, remember when Cid made the Disciplinary Committee plan a fundraiser? You thought up that stupid pie sale, and we had to cancel it because Fujin smashed all of them over your head?"

"IDIOT." Fujin, storming out of the kitchen pantry, her eyes venomous and Rajin dripping with banana cream as he trailed after her, bewildered.

Rajin's eyes clouded with grief for a moment, remembering, and Seifer worried that he might have said too much. Maybe the pain was too new…too raw…

Just then, however, Rajin broke into a laugh, an old, deep stomach-laugh, and Seifer joined him, thinking that Fujin would have liked to have seen them this way. That, wherever she was, maybe she was laughing, too.

He hoped so. Fujin's smiles were like Balamb sunsets…beautiful, rare, and fleeting.

…

…

"Yes, I understand." Xu set down the communicator on the hotel bed. "That was our clean-up crew in Esthar. Seems Almasy's been sighted in both Balamb and Esthar now."

Squall frowned as he pulled on his ceremonial SeeD jacket, making sure the medals were secure. "Could be a rumor."

Xu shrugged as she adjusted her tie. "Who knows. Martine sightings are still running rampant in Trabia, and that man is deader than dead. I oversaw his autopsy, for Hyne's sake."

Squall raised an eyebrow. "Should we tell Quistis?"

At that, Xu frowned, adjusting her collar. "She's been through enough. There's no need to get her hopes up if all of this turns out to be bored natives foaming at the mouth. Has everyone else gone?"

"Last time I checked, Rinoa and Xyrxes reported from the balcony that the others were starting to arrive."

"Good. Let's go."

Squall turned towards the door, running a hand through his hair. "Still, I can't help but think…that telegram…"

Xu placed a hand on her commander's shoulder. "Think of the trial now, Leonhart. We can deal with ghosts later."

… … …

Supreme Council Courthouse, Esthar

The hallway was the longest she had ever walked in her life. The long, marble slab stretched out in a pearly white mixture of sunlight and shadow, and it seemed to go on forever. She could hear her heart in her ears, clear and steady like a nervous drum.

Her own shadow rippled across the stone as her heels echoed through the empty corridor, the sound hollow in the thick, distant silence.

She focused on the wooden doors ahead of her. The doors to the largest and most powerful courthouse in the world- the Supreme Council. After today, she would leave those doors either a SeeD or a civilian.

"I will defend my honor and the honor of my comrades. For honor, for peace, and for the lives of my brothers and sisters, I will give my life…"

Once again, she found the oath of the SeeD echoing through her mind. She found, to her own surprise, that the words still carried the same weight as before, the same learned, poignant fervor. In all that she had come to doubt, she still found meaning in Cid's words to them, a gift of comradery and strength in the times to come. And they would need it.

The elegantly dressed guards at the door bowed, and with a heave, the great wooden doors opened to her.

In the courtroom ahead of her, a dangerous and corrupt government waited. Treacherous and stupid men. After today, they would seek her blood.

Today, she would seek theirs.


	37. Revelations and Redemptions

Author's Notes: Quistis' reply to Serabin in the next chapter about 'accidental beauty' was taken from Thomas Harris' novel, _Hannibal_. If you haven't read it, do. Nobody mixes up binary systems quite like Harris. Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks to all my readers, reviewers, and online buddies- you guys are the best! Disclaimer: Not mine…all Squaresoft. Except Cerberus. Cerberus is definitely mine. This chapter is dedicated to akewataru, a talented artist who was nice enough to dedicate an absolutely lovely piece of artwork to Fire and Ice. Check it out (with her other amazing works) at deviantart! **My Love Is Like to Ice**

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:  
How come it then that this her cold is so great  
Is not dissolved through my hot desire,  
But harder grows the more I her entreat?  
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat  
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,  
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,  
And feel my flames augmented manifold?  
What more miraculous thing may be told,  
That fire, which is congealed with senseless cold,  
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?  
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,  
That it can alter all the course of kind.

-Edmund Spenser

**Supreme Council Courthouse, Esthar**

Military law be damned…Quistis was ready to do away with due process and shoot everyone on the Galbadian bench, and from the look on Squall's face, he would have gladly assisted her. Quistis' appointment as the lawyer for Balamb had more to do with desperation than any professional capacity she held in a military courtroom. Better candidates had already been disqualified due to station or circumstance: Squall, Xu, and Serabin were disqualified due to their stature, and Nida was awaiting execution in a military prison. There was also the sad fact that Balamb, knee-deep in debt, simply could not afford to hire a lawyer. And so, Quistis sat on Balamb's side, a legal pad in her hand and a sinking feeling in her stomach as Colimer circled Squall like a shark.

"Desperate times...."mumbled Quistis.

"So, Mr. Leonhart, in the spirit of your 'innocent' plea, is it your contention that Cid Kramer was a terrorist, or a feeble man incapable of keeping up with the independent operatives of his own military institution-"

Squall, glaring, interrupted Colimer. "Neither. Cid Kramer was a man that believed that a stable world exists not in a system of absolutes, as the Galbadian Garden and government attempted to create, but in a series of checks and balances. Cid sought no more power for Balamb Garden than was necessary, and used no more power than was sufficient or appropriate. The Tromedia disaster, as Mr. Sirri words it, was the result of _his own government's_ funding. Given the dissolution of the alliance, owing to the untimely death or Headmaster Martine and the unavailability of Trabia, Balamb was forced to act alone in a situation that should never have existed in the first place. This _error_ can be corrected simply by rebuilding the IGCS system, which is, as you can all see, part 56D or our proposals. A renewed system of communication can act as a monitoring system for all governments and Gardens."

Colimer's smile was slippery. "I believe you're overlooking just one very simple fact, Mr. Leonhart."

"And that is?"

"Your gross lack of funding to rebuild, for one. Each Garden will require millions of gil to rebuild their most basic structure, not even counting the IGCS system, the final costs of which totaled approximately-" Colimer looked at a spec sheet. "-43 million, six hundred thirty seven thousand, and 12 gil to build in the first place. Even if-" Colimer gestured to the room at large. "These honorable men find merit in your argument, the very heart of it is flawed. Your own funds are insufficient, and to borrow money from city governments, as you so eloquently put it, would present a conflict of interests in the future."

"For once, Mr. Colimer, you and I are in total agreement."

Colimer's expression looked unsettled at the idea of an agreement for a moment before reassuming its naturally oiled look. "No further questions for this witness, your honors."

"Your witness," said Elisor, motioning to Quistis. "And I'd better not hear anymore speaking out of turn again. Understood?"

Colimer was no doubt referring to the earlier explosion that occurred when the charges were first read, causing Galbadia to protest and Balamb to shout insults. By the end of the day, Quistis imagined that there would be quite a bit of speaking out of turn.

"Squall Leonhart," said Quistis, approaching the bench. "Please tell us, in your own words, what the IGCS mission entailed."

"The IGCS mission was a covert operation on behalf of Balamb designed to determine the reason for failed communications between the Gardens. The group met with hostile reception at the gates, and were denied rightful access that should have been granted immediately. Subversion was suspected. Under this presumption, the group then infiltrated the base using non-lethal tactics, and found the system to be sabotaged. The group was attacked, and the tower was detonated by a fixture that had been lying dormant in the structure for weeks."

"Could the Balamb team, in one day, have rigged such an explosion, as Galbadia suggests?"

"The type of bomb used was a G-4 level explosive, and to level a large structure such as the IGCS, would have to have been set up to run the length of the building to level it the way it was. That kind of set-up would take weeks, even with a demolition expert. Arsen Drake, independent expert of demolition systems as hired independently for the investigation, confirmed this."

Quistis held up a sheath of papers. "Enter into evidence item 145A, testimony from Arsen Drake concerning the methods of explosives used in the tower's collapse." She turned back to Squall. "Please continue."

Squall nodded. "Also, there's the issue of eyewitness testimony. A resident closest to the IGCS testified that the night before the sabotage, he heard military trucks pass in the night. However, due to refueling issues, the only trucks the resident could have heard were those of Galbadian military trucks. "

"Enter into evidence Balamb Mission Report 01587A-76: Tromedian IGCS Infiltration. Written by Xu Chang, confirmed independently by mission team members and the late Cid Kramer, and orally confirmed by Commander Squall Leonhart." Taking the mission report, she handed a copy to each of the judges, then turned back to Squall.

"You said that the crew was ambushed, and that they received a hostile reception? But Commander, the death report had only personnel of the tower listed." Continued Quistis. "The tower personnel were hired by an impartial third-party source, weren't they?"

"The personnel on the sheets were all dressed in military uniforms and heavily armed," replied Squall. "Also, the bodies were found in an advanced state of decomposition unnatural for their first stated time of death. This was at first attributed to the intense mag-concentrations, heat, and electricity in the vicinity. After the Battle of Esthar, however, a second autopsy was performed on all corpses, and the biotoxin found in the Galbadian soldiers at Esthar was also present in the IGCS personnel at the IGCS."

"In other words, the staff was being controlled remotely?"

"In all probability, yes."

"Could you ruminate as to whom?"

"Objection!" Colimer bleated. "Speculation!"

"I'll rephrase." Replied Quistis. "Who was found to by the lead researcher and distributor of said biotoxin?"

"Odine's laboratories."

Quistis gathered another packet from the desk. "Enter into evidence Coroner's report 1AC-594878, autopsies done by Esthar and confirmed independently by both Trabian and Balamb specialists. This report confirms the presence of a biotoxin in both the IGCS crew and the Galbadian soldiers present at Esthar. The substances were found to be identical." She turned. "Thank you, your honors. No further questions."

Colimer stood as Quistis returned to her seat. "Redirect, your honors?"

"Go ahead, Colimer."

"Squall Leonhart, when you say eyewitness testimony, are you referring to that of a Mister Charles Drefford?"

"Yes."

"And where is Mr. Drefford today?"

"Dead. We have his signed statement, however."

"And did you happen to read his autopsy, Mr. Leonhart?"

"No."

"Besides the head damage that killed him, there was extensive cirrhosis of the liver present. Your witness was the town drunk, Mr. Leonhart. Tell me, how reliable are they, generally?"

"Objection!" Said Quistis, while flipping through her notes, furiously trying to find the article that prevented witness medical records from being released. She found nothing. "Defamation of a witness-"

"Your report is based upon what the man saw and heard. These senses are affected, even altered, when exposed to alcohol." Replied Colimer.

"Your objection is overruled, Miss Trepe," said Elisor.

Colimer smiled. "Galbadia calls Drake Winsburg to the stand."

Quistis blew a piece of hair out of her eyes as she slammed back into her chair. Doubt had been planted.

…

…

…

Leaving Rajin, Seifer had walked the streets of Esthar for a good hour, trying to find the main market square. The sound of construction and the gleam of metal assaulted his senses- by the time he reached his desired destination, he was in a sour mood. Selecting one of the three flower merchants that had set up carts outdoors, Seifer peered down at the selection, rubbing his temples.

"What can I get for you, young man?" An old man leaned over the side of his cart, peering over at Seifer with a pair of thick spectacles that magnified kind, dark eyes pillowed by laugh lines in his gnarled face.

Seifer glanced behind him. He'd never bought flowers in his life. What did people put on the graves of loved ones?

"I'm visiting someone…" He began.

"A female friend?" asked the old man.

"Uh...yeah…"

"Family or lover?"

Nosey old geezer. "I…well…."

"Lover then. Roses. Have you slept with her, or is this 'oil to grease the machine', so to speak?"

"Have I…_what_!" Seifer found himself blushing, which infuriated him even further. He hadn't blushed since he was eleven, damnit.

_A hundred flower vendors in Esthar, and I get a perverted, nosey old geezer. It figures. I attract antiquated-weirdoes from all corners of the globe._

"Look, all I want is some damned flowers-" he started.

The man glared. "A flower is not just an arrangement of aromatic carbon chains, young man. A flower is poetry…a collection of velvet petals that encapsulate an emotion too beautiful, too pure to speak. The wrong flower can mean the wrong words. You would not wish to say the wrong thing to a beautiful woman, would you, young man?"

"Uh…well…no."

"Then how have you known this woman?"

Briefly, Seifer entertained the idea of hitting the man over the head with his sword handle, grabbing a random bouquet, and running. Still, he supposed…putting the wrong thing on Quistis' grave would be like saying the wrong goodbye…and he only wanted to say goodbye once.

"Tell me about her." Said the old man, eyes twinkling.

_They called her an Ice Queen. She ate her eggs like a puzzle. She folded her socks. She had legs that went on forever. She had a mouth like a Trabian sailor when she was pissed off. She had cold feet. She stared down a tank._

"She's dead." Said Seifer, bluntly.

The geezer's eyes dimmed to a more somber sheen. "I see. Tell me, what was she like, in the living world?"

Seifer looked down at his feet. _One more day_, he thought. _One more day and these questions of her can end._

"I dunno. She was…too beautiful to be a soldier, and she wouldn't have believed that."

"Hmmm…" the man tapped his wrinkled chin. "Yes, yes…those will do nicely. That will be twenty-five gil, please," said the old man, holding out his gnarled hand. Frowning suspiciously, Seifer dropped the gil into his palm.

The old man was muttering as he drew the bouquet together, gathering long stemmed flowers and tying them with a pale silk ribbon. "All flowers die. Their fragrance is temporary. Their beauty is but a moment, a smell, a petal, and then…they fade. In our mortal lives, we love and live like flowers. Or love is brief, beautiful, and terrible. You wear a sword, so I think that you are a soldier. You deal in death. I too, deal in death. You create it. I commemorate it. We compliment each other, in a way."

After a few moments, he held out his hand as the man handed him a beautiful white bouquet, its perfume faint but sweet.

"White roses with white lilies and hosta. Purity, humility and majesty mixed with devotion." The old man winked. "You may count yourself lucky, young man. Many never have the opportunity to carry the memory of such a woman…to remember the smell of such a flower."

"Yeah." Seifer tucked the parcel beneath his coat, the stems wedged between his hip and sword belt. "Where's the Esthar Memorial?"

…

…

…

The Esthar Memorial consisted of a half-circle of stone slabs, with thousands of names etched into the gleaming rock. Emerald grass tossed in the wind around the stones, and in the middle, there was a small temple, where guests could pray or pay their respects. In the center, a single marble statue seemed to stand guard over the memorial, a white pillar shining like a beacon in the sun. The statue was braced against a platform, the smooth, marble swath of hair tangled in an imaginary wind. Determination had been cut into the marble eyes, and a firm set was etched in the white, glossed mineral lips. The statue was standing with a straight, defiant posture, whip coiled in one hand as eyes gazed off into the distance, fixed on the gates of Esthar. Her eyes faced where the sun would rise, and she was dressed in her SeeD uniform…the one she had died in.

An inscription at the base read:

_Dedicated to Vice General Quistis Trepe….Hero of Esthar…Soldier and Savior._

The monument would have embarrassed her.

A single gatekeeper had been chosen to watch over the tombs, and the guard was exchanged every six hours. Aside from the visitors that came and went in mournful silence, the memorial was quiet…peaceful, with only the wind humming through the grass and whistling through the stones.

Mert shook himself awake as his head drooped yet again, and looked quickly around to make sure anyone hadn't caught him sleeping. Nothing wrong with a little nap, he told himself. It wasn't like anyone was going to walk away with one of the memorials. He adjusted the ceremonial rifle on his shoulder and continued his pace around the temple.

He glanced around to see that only one person was visiting. Thank Hyne. He couldn't afford to lose such a cushy job.

The visitor was a young man, staring up at the statue of the woman with an odd look on his face. He was tall, dressed in a white leather coat, the tail of which flipped up in the wind with every stray gust that wound through the stones. A large sword was slung on a belt across his back, and Mert was instantly suspicious. Nobody carried weapons without permits, and nobody had permits these days but soldiers. And this man wasn't dressed like a soldier. He looked more like an avatar or a rogue mercenary, half-bathed in the sunlight standing alone amongst the pure color of the white stones.

As the man grew closer, Mert could see more detail in the man's face. A fringe of blonde hair sprung down onto his forehead, partially obscuring an angry-looking scar that slashed down the middle of his face between his eyes. He looked like...

Impossible. That man was dead. It had been in all the papers. Mert could even recall the headline. _Old war Criminal Seifer Almasy Turned Hero, Granted Post-Mortem Pardon by Garden Council._

Mert pinched himself and swore when it actually hurt. Nope. Not dreaming.

"There's no w-weapons 'llowed in the memorial." He surprised himself by speaking as the man approached him.

The man gave him a measured look, hard green gaze sinking into his before reaching up around his shoulder and slamming the sword down onto the counter. The blade was huge- a slice of heavy metal that ran nearly half the length of a man's body. A modified soldier's gunblade without the gun.

This couldn't be. He'd seen the picture in the paper. He'd seen the obituary.

The young man looked past him at the marble walls. "I'm looking for the marker of Quistis Trepe. I can't find it."

"But you're- you're Seifer Al-Al-Al-"

"Yeah, whatever." finished the young man, looking edgy. "Now tell me where Quistis Trepe's marker is. I'm getting impatient."

Mert gaped at him. "Bu-but you can't be Seifer Al-Al-masy. He-He's dead."

The young man rolled his eyes. "Fine. I'm Dick Smith, tax accountant. Now tell me where to find the fucking marker," he ordered, jabbing his finger into the book of names and stone locations. "It's not a national secret, is it?"

Mert blinked at him. A ghost. He was talking to a ghost.

"Mi-Mi-Miss T-Trepe don't got a marker."

The man's eyes narrowed. "And why the _hell_ is that?"

Uh-oh. He'd made the ghost angry. What happened when you made ghosts angry? Did they curse you? Drink your blood? Steal your skin? "B-B-Because sh-she didn't _die_ at Esthar, sir."

The young man grabbed a handful of Mert's coat and hauled him forward, knocking the heavy book onto the floor. "Then where the _fuck_ is her gravestone?"

"Sh-sh-she-" Mert's stutter had reached new levels of stalling.

"Spit it out before I really lose my temper."

_He hadn't lost his temper yet? _**Oh, shit.**

"S-Sh-She d-d-doesn't have one."

The man looked as if he wanted to create a slab in the memorial for Mert. "_Why the fuck not_?"

"Be-be-because she isn't d-d-dea-dead, sir."

"She _what_?" The man promptly released him, and he fell to a crumpled heap on the floor. The young man staggered back, looking pale even for a ghost.

Mert was rambling now. "She's here in Esthar, at the Supreme Council hearing, sir. Balamb Garden vs. the people of Galbadia, sir, every Garden representative is there and I think they're, I mean, the Gardens're petitioning for the d-dissolution of the Galbadian government- it was in all the papers and-"

"Hold on a fucking minute. Quistis Trepe, the vice-lieutenant of Balamb Garden-"

"Y-yes sir, she stopped here with the others to pay her respects. It's in the ledger…s-she s-si-signed her name, paid her respects. The others with her…teased her about the statue." Mert fell to his knees and opened the ledger, trying to sift through the book to find the signature. "She walked around the stones with the others, touchin' em…she looked real sad-" His questing finger finally settled on a line of loopy print.

"_See_?"

The young man in front of him stared hard at the signature, his gaze a mixture of hope and disbelief.

**Quistis A. Trepe**

He'd seen enough red ink on his SeeD papers to know that handwriting anywhere. The flowers slipped from his hand, tumbling onto the ground beneath him.

Quistis. Alive.

Mert watched the wraith's expression change from woe to wonder, and in a flash, the ghost had him by the collar again. "You'd better not be lying to me."

Mert shook his head furiously. "N-no sir."

"Where is this conference?"

"It's in the city square, sir, on Main and Loire-"

But the young man had already grabbed his sword and turned around, walking, then running up the hill like his feet were on fire.

Mert hauled himself up to his feet, trembling, before he noticed the money note the young man had tossed at him- it lay crumpled among the flowers. The guys back at Zar's Tavern weren't going to believe this...he'd talked to a ghost, and the ghost had given him fifty gil for his troubles.

…

…

…

Drake Winsberg's testimony had proven both lengthy and damaging, and Quistis was relieved when the man stepped off the stand. Stealing a garbage truck certainly had not been SeeD's brightest idea…or finest hour.

She stood. "I wish to make a request. One of my witnesses is scheduled to return to the Esthar Department of Corrections in half an hour and due to the rather lengthy procedures of the opposing side, I request that my witness be admitted early."

Elisor looked up. "Does Galbadia object?"

Quistis thought for sure she was going to have a lengthy argument ahead of her, and was surprised when Colimer stood. "No objections, your honors."

Quistis frowned, but continued. "In that case, I call Dr. Odine to the stand."

_She remembered going over the witness list with Xu, both girls sprawled out in the Esthar Inn lounge and running on less than an hour of sleep between them. "We can't call Odine, Xu." she'd said. "He's lost it."_

"_We don't have a choice." Xu had rubbed at her neck. "Selphie found him stuffed in a doorway at and managed to haul him out before it crashed. Apparently Seifer had put him there. The man's a few screws short of an erector set, but he's shaping up to be a key witness. He's the only one that can solidly connect solid Galbadian money with Adel."_

As if on cue, Odine emerged from the side door, surrounded by guards and weighted down with arm and leg chains. He certainly looked….diminished without his usual attire.

There was a heavy look in his eyes, and the corner of his mouth was drooping, allowing a trail of spittle to work its way down his chin. Quistis approached the bench as the guards set him down.

"What _the hell have you done with my witness?"_ she hissed.

"We tranq'ed 'im." The guard was unapologetic. "He's been trying to bite everything in site," he replied in a low voice. "Namely, us. They don't pay me enough to be some psycho's teething ring, honey."

Great. There went the tiny shred of credibility that the doctor had going for him to begin with.

_Best to keep the conversation short._

"Dr. Odine, were you responsible for the reconstruction of the late Sorceress Adel?"

Odine's left eye twitched, his head swaying as he tried to look up at her. "I vos."

"And where did you receive funding for such endeavors?"

Odine's head was now beginning to slip to one side. "Zer vas…individuals in both ze Galbadian and Estharian governments….zat invested….Martine provided…sufficient facilities…raw materials…zey vanted to use a Sorceress as a veapon. Zey thought zey could reprogram her…as a kind of tabula rosa." He chuckled, spittle running down his lips to pool on his lap. "But she had…other ideas…as you could see."

Quistis resisted the urge to get a stick to prop her witness's head up. "By raw materials, Odine, do you mean orphaned and low-income children?"

Odine sniffed, his eyes rolling like well-oiled marbles in his skull. What the hell had they given him, a Wendigo-tranquillizer? "Eef zat eez vat you call ze live ones, zen yes."

There was no remorse in the doctor's eyes. She thought of the troubled children she'd met by the water, their arms, legs, and eyesockets stuffed with wires grafted to their bone structure, and Quistis had to resist the urge to beat her own witness. The sooner Odine got off the stand, the better. "No further questions, your honor."

"Your witness, Galbadia."

Colimer stood. "Dr. Odine, I've had the pleasure of reading your journal. Fascinating stuff, really. Tell me, Odine, you think of yourself as more of a creator than a doctor, don't you?"

"Vat vould you know about creation? Zis room is filled vith butchers...destroyers…"

"But you're a _creator_, aren't you, Dr. Odine?"

The older man's eyes stopped swiveling for a moment, coming to light with a cold, frightening intensity on the courtroom at large. "As far as you maggots are concerned…I am **Hyne** himself!"

The courtroom stirred.

Quistis wasn't sure who she felt like chucking her legal pad at more: her witness or the Galbadian council.

Colimer turned, a sneer lighting his face. "This witness is not mentally sound enough to stand trial. I respectfully ask that his testimony be stricken from the record."

"Your recommendation is noted, Colimer." Said Elisor. The guards returned, warily taking Odine's arms to lead him from the courtroom. The man was still mumbling, something about 'divine creation' and 'militant butchery'.

Quistis sank a little in her chair. This was not looking good. Balamb could procure a few character witnesses, and a few witnesses to the IGCS fiasco. Kadowaki's testimony had been particularly useful, along with her own findings from the DS. Research Lab. There was also Arya, of course, with her technical evidence, and Laguna, their prime character witness, but with Odine bottomed out and Drake Winsburg testifying that his small town had been terrorized….

"For our final witness-" Colimer droned.

Quistis drummed her pencil against her legal pad. Final witness. _Finally_.

"Galbadia calls Ceres Aryanna Morlisius to the stand."

The name on the witness list had been unfamiliar, but the list had identified the person simply as 'Galbadian soldier'. Quistis craned her neck behind her to see who would approach the bench. To her surprise, it was Arya that stood, and, without looking at any of them, walked to the front of the room with an armful of documents.

_What_? Xu mouthed.

_I don't know_, Quistis mouthed back, giving her a little shrug.

_Ceres Aryanna Morlisius?_

Squall, Quistis, and the others shared a look, frowning, as Arya was sworn in on the book of Hyne.

There must have been some mistake…

…and yet, the feeling in Quistis' stomach told her that the only mistake that had been made was theirs.

Colimer folded his arms. "Miss Morlisius, what is your specialty?"

The woman who called herself Arya cleared her throat. "Operating systems management and infiltration."

Colimer smiled. "You're a hacker."

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"And you were not originally from Balamb Garden, were you?"

"No. I was a transfer from Galbadia."

"In fact, Miss Elsius, is it not true that you were sent as a cell for the Galbadian government shortly before the second sorceress conflict?"

All eyes were focused on Arya. Zell was gaping at her like a fish out of water. Both Squall, Xu, and Serabin were looking extremely pale.

Arya, however, stared straight ahead. "Correct."

The sinking feeling in Quistis' stomach had just become a lead weight that dropped clear to the bottom. Their case had just gone from shaky to absolute ruin.

Colimer, however, was glowing like a new bride. "And what was your mission while at Balamb Garden?"

"To infiltrate the Balamb Garden entity and to ascertain the military's technical, personal, and mechanical capabilities, as well as to investigate the possibility of a political and physical threat in Mr. Kramer."

Quistis glanced behind her. Zell's fists were balled, and his face was pale. Her other friends alternated between enraged and dumfounded. Quistis herself was unsure of where to start.

"During this time, you sent quite a bit of confidential information about Balamb Garden to the Galbadian government, did you not?"

"Yes." Said Arya quietly.

"Including, but not limited to, outfitting the Garden with a GS tracker, which allowed G-Garden the luxury of tracking Balamb Garden, correct?"

"Yes."

Selphie was now forcibly holding Zell down.

"It was also your job to access the trust of the Class A SeeD circle known as the heroes, and to assess the threat of both Sorceress Edea and later, Sorceress Heartily, yes?"

"Yes."

Quistis leaned on her hand, driving the heel of her hand hard into her skull. There was no way she could object to Arya's…_Ceres'_…. testimony. She hadn't objected to her when she'd seen the witness list, as she hadn't recognized the name and the witness was farther down the list, considered minor. Or so she'd thought.

Shit, shit, **shit**. Anger burned in her…anger at Arya, of course, but mostly at herself. How could she have missed this?

_Easy._ _You were so busy trying to prosecute those in front of you, you forgot to look _**behind** _you._

_It was Nida all over again._

"Were you ever detected?"

Arya shook her head. "Balamb and Galbadia both host an exchange program. Balamb had no reason to suspect espionage at that time."

"Still, they were infiltrated rather easily, weren't they?"

"…yes."

Colimer paced. "And you headed the Galbadian cell faction, did you not?"

Arya was wringing her hands. "My orders were to ensure that Nida Xiong and Brek Garek were not discovered as cells. My knowledge of them was that they were activated to investigate B. Gardens role in the IGCS failure, nothing more. We were all trained, specialized, but aside from my specialty, none of our operatives was known. The one glitch in the mission occurred when we were given orders about Serabin Glyphias, who was misidentified as a dormant cell. Brek Garek attempted to activate him, and he refused. Brek dealt with it…I assumed he had been paid off. I didn't think…"

Serabin narrowed his eyes from the second row.

"However, the rest of the surveillance ran smoothly?" interrupted Colimer.

"Balamb was distracted by the IGCS failure and later, the attack on Cid Kramer."

"And?"

Arya studied her hands. "And the cells were not discovered. The mission was a success."

Colimer was positively glowing. So, Miss _Morlisius_, Galbadian missionary, is it your opinion that Balamb Garden, for all its negligence, ignorance, and general incapability-"

"_Objection_!" Quistis was furious. Here, their case was going down the drain, and all she could offer up was the occasional objection.

Elisor sighed. "Get on with it, Colimer."

"Is it you opinion that Balamb Garden can, through its actions, be held accountable for both the IGCS failure and the battle of Esthar?"

The courtroom was so quiet; Quistis could almost hear her food digesting as they waited for the expected answer. Here it came. The killing blow.

Selphie and Serabin, who previously had been trying to contain Zell Dinct, froze, allowing the martial artist to worm through their grip and stomp out of the courtroom, past the guards, and out the witness door. Quistis winced as the door slammed behind him.

_Zell…_

Arya looked up for the first time since the questioning. "No, it is not."

This clearly was not the answer Sirri expected from his prized cell. Truthfully, it wasn't what Quistis had expected, either. He narrowed his eyes, starting to get to his feet before he was urged back down by the elder Glyphias.

Arya continued. "Nida Xiong and Brek Garek were _not_ sent to Balamb to examine a conflict of interest. They were sent to wipe Galbadia's ass, and to make sure that Galbadia's private interests remained private."

New shock echoed throughout the courtroom. Except this time, it was on the Galbadian side.

Sirri balked. "I beg your _pardon_?"

Arya's normally pretty face was screwed up in anger. "Two cells were sent in with a different agenda. Brek Garek was sent to sweep up your loose financial lines, which you knew would connect Galbadia to Odine and Martine. Cid Kramer was growing suspicious of hidden cell activity, and he was starting to trace it, successfully. Nida was apparently ordered to neutralize the problem, but instead, he decided to get rid of him. As subordinate to Tech specialist Nida, I was to hand over all data and information to him when I returned the mission to AmmuCorp and BioTech. Fortunately, I kept records of my own."

Colimer approached the bench, doing his best to look intimidating but instead succeeding only looking overstuffed. "Miss Elsius, need I remind you that you took an oath, a sacred oath, to seek truth and justice in the name of the Galbadian government seven years ago? That you took an oath today, to tell the truth?"

Arya's, no, _Ceres'_, eyes flashed. Gone was the meek and mousey librarian, and in her place sat the coiled and trembling form of a cornered and enraged mercenary. "_Now_ my government is interested in the truth! The truth, gentlemen, is that the Galbadian government has been funneling money from arms dealers and terrorist factions since the new parliament has been elected! The **truth** is that the Galbadian Government wanted both Balamb and Trabia Garden wiped out in pursuit of a political and militant monopoly!"

"Objection!" Colimer was livid, seemingly ignorant that he was objecting to his own witness.

The woman formerly known as Arya ignored him. "There are scattered cells in the Estharian, Balamb, and Trabian governments! The goal of the new Galbadian government is the acquisition of all major government control through cell-subversion and an internal depletion of government funds. The men that-"

"_Objection_!"

"The men of Galbadia were willing to fund a superweapon to overthrow both Esthar and Balamb, and Trabia was next. When Eve01 activated independently, you tried to sweep your involvement under the rug-"

"Objection, your honors! This testimony is unfounded!" Sirri was now standing, furious.

"I…object to his objection!" shouted Quistis, not sure if she was actually allowed to do so. She was beginning to feel as if she were in the center of a three-ring circus, with no idea of which side the lions were on.

"Not _unfounded_, Sirri." Said Arya coldly. "I've been doing some digging of my own. Enter into evidence A045-9678, annual weapons reports from AmmuCorp and BioTech, inventory linking to Galbadian Garden and the construction of Weapon Eve01. Enter into evidence Odine's financial and personal log, evidence number 905.2E-" saying this, she slammed a stack of documents onto the counter.

Colimer approached the bench. "Your honors, those documents could have been tailored-"

Apparently Arya had been anticipating this. "As you'll notice, your honors, I went through the trouble of notifying Estharian and Trabian governments eight months ago, who also extracted information from the motherboards and sent it independently to the courts. I trust your honors received these documents prior to the trial."

"We have," said Elisor.

Sirri was trembling. His secret weapon had gone off…right in his face. Quistis felt like dancing.

"Your job was to tell the truth!" he screamed, face reddening by the second.

"I am **DONE** telling **YOUR** version of the truth!" shouted Arya.

Elisor banged his gavel so hard that the wood splintered from the podium. "I will _not_ have this courtroom become a zoo!" Guards began to approach.

"_I find this soldier in contempt of the Galbadian army, and I want her removed and tried for treason_!" shouted Sirri, gesticulating wildly, his face now resembling something akin to a tomato with a sunburn.

Arya glared at Sirri. "Better an honest prison cell than soldier to a corrupt state," she spat coldly.

Sirri had lost it. "You double-crossing bitch-"

Elisor stood. "I've heard _enough_!" He pointed to Sirri, robe billowing. "The next person that so much as _blinks_ out of turn in this courtroom will be held in contempt!" The elder judge returned to his seat, face mottled. The other judges leaned in, conversing briefly before leaning back in their seats.

Quistis stood. "Balamb has…no questions for this witness, your honors." Truthfully, she wouldn't know where to begin.

In truth, Balamb's side of the courtroom was too dumbfounded to blink, and the Galbadian side too shocked. They all sat, staring, as Arya…._Ceres_, walked calmly from the witness stand, and took a seat in the back by herself, folding her hands in her lap and looking pale and shaken.

"Balamb?"

Quistis turned back. "Yes, your honors?"

"Your next witness?"

"Yes….of course. Forgive me, your honors. Balamb calls Serabin Glyphias to the stand."

The young man, after offering her a reassuring smile, walked calmly to the front of the room. After all that had just happened, and with what Serabin was about to do, she gave him immense credit for his stoicism.

"Serabin, Galbadia's main contention, other than their now deflated argument of Balamb's ineptitude and corruption, seems to be concentrated in the financial realm, does it not?"

"Objection! _Speculation_!" bleated Colimer.

Quistis was thankful that she didn't have her whip at that moment…had she been in possession of it, it would have been wound around Colimer's thick throat.

"Sustained. Get to the point, Miss Trepe."

"Serabin, if you would explain to the council, why are funds no longer a point of contention?"

Serabin smiled. "Certainly. Section 4A-5D8012 states that in the event of the conviction of a politically corrupted individual whose wealth has been derived from the misappropriation of public funds, those funds may be applied to another institution in the event of a court ruling."

"It is under this law that, pending rightful conviction, I propose to liquidate the marked Galbadian assets for their illegal appropriation of funds to go towards the renovation of both Galbadian and Balamb Gardens, as well as the rebuilding of the IGCS center. The rest of the money is to go to a scholarship fund for students of any Garden who wish to enroll. All funds will be in a public account, the contents of which any citizen can view and track at any time."

"Thank you, Serabin," replied Quistis. "No further questions."

At this, both Harven Glyphias and Pennsel Garek looked pale. Harven got to his feet, but Sirri motioned him back down. Sirri glanced over at Serabin.

Colimer got to his feet. "Serabin, as Galbadian Headmaster, surely you can understand the plight of ambitious men-"

"Your presumption, Mr. Sirri, that I can relate to men like yourselves in any aspect is insulting." Snapped Serabin. Harven Glyphias was looking at his son as if he had never seen him before in his life. Sirri simply looked furious.

"What I _do_ understand" continued Serabin, "Pertains to the laws set forth by our predecessors to punish those who abused the trust and responsibility that was placed upon them. These are laws that you soon become intimate with."

"You ungrateful **snit**…" whispered Glyphias senior. Quistis and Squall glanced over at him.

"My missions, before my own…_incapacitation_…by Galbadia's sleeping cell team, led me to discover the nature of the accounts being distributed to Odine and his research. The money, with the evidence Miss Ceres so helpfully provides, can be traced back to several prominent Galbadian figures who had access to the account, and therefore had knowledge of it. However, the most interesting thing about the account is the nature of its origin- an account wired through Trabia to Winhill International, and managed exclusively by one Barlk Sirri."

Barlk Reginis Sirri looked as if he had just swallowed a hand grenade.

"The account has been only recently made active, and, so as not to attract attention, has made a minimal amount of transactions. However, there is one transaction that will be of particular interest to the court." Serabin held up another sheet of paper. "This transaction was made approximately one day before the IGCS system terminated and the Gardens lost complete function…the day that it is speculated that rogue terrorists infiltrated the IGCS to wire the building. On this day, two hundred and fifty thousand gil was wired from this account to a Trabian account that only Mayor Drake Winsberg, mayor of Tromedia, had remote access to. I would be interested to hear the reason for this exchange, as Galbadia already pays a set lump sum for its vehicle occupation and there was no announcement made of such a transaction on public record, where it would have been required by law to be."

It was Mayor Drake Winsberg's turn to look anxious.

"At any rate, there is a substantial amount left in the account." Serabin picked up a sheet. "$4.5 trillion, three hundred and fifty million gil. This sum," continued Serabin, undaunted. "Should your honors accept the proposal, is to be called the Cid Kramer Trust Fund."

"I _object_," snarled Harven Glyphias, knocking over his chair as he got to his feet.

"Sit **down**, Mr. Glyphias," ordered the High Council head.

But Harven had already fixed his eyes upon his son. He was standing, arms rigid at his sides.

Serabin's outward expression was indifferent, but Quistis could see the something flash briefly across his eyes as he turned away from his father. It might have been disgust.

The Head Judge motioned to one of the bailiffs. "Have this man removed. I want him held in contempt of court." The guards nodded, and promptly dragged a screaming Harven Glyphias from the room.

"You are dead to me, boy!" shouted Harven. "_Dead_! **DEAD**! And I will make it so!"

Sirri was stammering, his face a blotchy shade of red as he stood. Quistis thought the expression made him look like a sputtering tomato. "High Council, you may have permission to search any and all of the public Galbadian funds. I assure you, every gil can be accounted for-"

Quistis summoned up her remaining strength. It was now or never. "Permission requested to approach the bench. As the defense rests, I wish to make my final statement to the court."

Diirk, the Trabian judge, looked up. "Permission granted." The judges had evidently given up on procedure at this point. Supreme Council cases were otherwise known to run like clockwork. Thus far, this case had been nothing but a well-oiled mess, and Elisor saw it for what it was.

Quistis collected the items on her desk and approached the High Supreme Council with several stacks of stapled paper, handing them out in turn. "I have no doubt, your honors, that if you were to check the _public_ Galbadian funds, that every cent would be accounted for…theoretically. What you won't find, however, is this Winhill International bank account 1865203-9859, from which wired money arrives daily and what Mr. Glyphias was speaking of. Each feed in this account can be traced, with some difficulty, to a member of the Galbadian government, and amounts to well over fifty billion gil. The account can also be traced to several well-known arms deals and terrorist factions. This account has been in use for years, and contains money from many illegal bribes, laundering, and other drug and weapons deals that, sadly, have no legal basis in society." Quistis turned around, her hands behind her back. "Another area of interest is the mechanism placed under the control of one very large industry. That of Darwin Drosskow's computer network."

Her gaze never wavered as she procured a small disk from her pocket. "This disk contains Odine's research done on Project Eden, which resulted in the resurrection of Adel and the subsequent destruction of thousands of lives and millions in property damage. Interestingly enough, it also contains enough evidence to incriminate both you, Darwin, and fifteen of Galbadia's cabinet members in this somewhat…misguided investment." She threw the disk onto the desk. "There are over fifteen thousand copies of this information hidden in generic computers everywhere, should anyone choose to attempt to sabotage this information."

Darwin stood, calmly. "Your honors, I was paid only for services rendered regarding the IGCS as well as several Galbadian security systems. I had absolutely no idea that I was receiving payment from such unlawful sources."

Harven was glaring at Darwin as if he wanted to rip out his throat, fighting the guards at the doors. "You self-preserving son of a bitch-"

But Quistis wasn't through. "Regarding Mr. Drosskow, it should also be of particular interest to the Supreme Council that the Sorceress Adel had access to the IGCS system months ago. This system was designed exclusively by Darwin Drosskow, so I doubt he can claim to be ignorant of its operation."

The young man smiled condescendingly at her as he stood. "My dear, you should know with your apparent extensive knowledge in technology that a highly technical being such as Adel would have been able to access even my system."

Quistis held up a sheet with thousands of lines of codes. Months of preparation were finally beginning to come together…endless nights filed with caffeine and line after line of tedious documentation…

"This feed, recovered from the Galbadian communications mainframe, shows a line of access attempts by the virus 110100Eve01001, which we now understand to be Adel's signature code."

Darwin did his best to look bored. "Again, I fail to see the relevance, miss. If the statistics on the Adel superweapon are true, then that creature could have run millions of code lines per second. In a few months, she certainly would have had access. GenEden was, after all, as much of a program as a living weapon."

"Oh, it wouldn't concern me that she _eventually_ found the codes, Mr. Drosskow. Even as advanced as your technology is, it isn't impenetrable. What worries me," continued Quistis, fixing him with a hard gaze that had lost all traces of admiration, "Is that Sorceress Adel needed to attempt access only _once_."

"That proves nothing but that the statistics were in her favor," he replied, but Darwin's eyes had narrowed, and he had lost his cool demeanor.

"Let it also be known that _statistically_ speaking, you are the owner of 2 out of 2 major failed security systems in the past year, those belonging to the Estharian Shield system, and those of the IGCS system, both whose failure owed more to convenience than chance." Quistis glared at him. "I propose, also that the nature of the Estharian Shield factor be investigated."

"Your proposal will be taken into consideration," said Elisor, scanning the packet and leaning to confer with the other judges. "Stay on task, Miss Trepe."

"You fool!" snarled Darwin under his breath. "I'll teach you to drag my name through the mud!"

At this, Quistis smiled and said calmly through her teeth, "When I get through with you, Drosskow your name will be the equivalent."

"That will be enough," Elisor said, looking at both Quistis and Drosskow sternly.

Darwin sat back down, glaring daggers at Quistis. Towards the back, Quistis could hear 'Ceres' muttering something about a Trabian horse.

"The next person that steps out of line in my courtroom will be held in contempt." Said Elisor, looking up from his documents.

"Understood, your honors." Quistis bowed slightly. "Permission to continue?"

Elisor leaned back in his chair, looking both exhausted and resigned at the same time. The proceedings were so far out of order that the judge (and the rest of the council) had apparently given up any pretense of organization. "Granted."

"I've come today not to profess Balamb Garden's innocence, but to demand its retribution from guilty hands." She gripped the edges of her desk, and swayed only slightly against a momentary spell of dizziness. She'd been standing up too long, something that Kadowaki had warned against. However, she maintained her posture. "Both Balamb and Esthar will be rebuilt, in addition to Galbadia Garden's repairs." She shifted, then looked directly into the eyes of Darwin Drosskow.

"This is not a conflict of independently governed military bodies. This is an example of corrupt governments, and corrupt men. Galbadian politics have grown weak at the hands of weak men. It is under insurmountable evidence that Galbadia should be tried and convicted by the international court. As per the law of international court, I, Quistis Trepe, acting on behalf of Balamb Garden and of every honest citizen of every government, file a complaint against all current members of the Galbadian government, Armond Desari and Gomeri Slavanti of the Estharian Senate, Tromedian mayor Drake Winsburg, and Winhill representative Barlk Sirri under evidence of-"

THUNK. A large stack of papers landed on the desk.

"Illegal correspondence, funding and planning confirmed with Dr. Odine, M.D."

THUNK. Another large stack followed.

"Recent AmmuCorp records revealing secret funding and spending under project GenEden, as per this conspiracy-"

THUNK. With every loud slap onto the table in front of her, Quistis imagined a nail in the coffin of the corrupt and greedy men that sat beside her. She imagined a bullet in their heads.

"GenEden, failed military invention constructed under illegal processes, funding by illegal means, and executed under false and foolish pretenses."

THUNK.

"I'd also like to enter the newly acquired evidence of Ar- Ceres Aryanna Morlisius as supplemental evidence that reinforces our theories of internal government corruption. This, your honors, was the cause of the destruction for which Balamb is being accused. In reality, were it not for Balamb Garden and the perseverance of its leaders, I venture that none of us would be here today in the pursuit of justice. It is therefore that I, Quistis Trepe, acting as representative, demand justice for all deserving persons that stand before you, and request all those guilty that stand before you also." Finishing her speech, she bowed respectfully before the judges, fighting a wave of dizziness and exhaustion.

She had done all she could.

When she straightened, Elisor also stood, his face a mask of rage and indignation. The other judges were standing as well, their faces a match for their elected leader save for those of Doughston and Norris, Galbadia's pocket-judges. Theirs was heavily masked, and leaked fear with every nervous dart of their eyes.

Colimer also stood. "Galbadia also wishes to present its closing statement."

"I've heard _enough_." Said Elisor, his face both blotched and disgusted. He slammed his gavel onto the large oak desk, and the sound reverberated throughout the courtroom. He pointed a long finger towards the Galbadian side. "Escort these men to the E-District prison sublevel B to await Galbadian, Estharian and Balamb persecution, who may claim their grievances in turn. You will be made examples of, gentlemen, make no mistake of that. The funding mentioned by Balamb will be considered. In the meantime, take these men from my sight," he spat.

The court officers came forward, and Elisor continued. "Balamb's license is to be reinstated, and will await the prosecution of the Garden Council for operation under a suspended license. And Balamb, make no mistake in my ruling: the moment you become more hired hand than impartial peacemaker, you, too, will see your swift end."

Light broke in Quistis' heart, poignant and powerful, and she felt tears come to her eyes.

The guards came forward to take the arms of both Sirri, Winsberg, and the other Galbadian senators, and the Supreme council Judges filed out, the doors slamming shut behind them.

The courtroom erupted, and Quistis found herself instantly surrounded by her friends, who were all shouting, smiling, and hugging one another.

She found herself joining them, laughing as they circled her, patting eachother. As Irvine and Squall embraced her, lifting her up, she was sure that somewhere, on that eternal shore, Cid was smiling.

…

…

…

After the tv and photo-crews had left, the group turned towards the exit; towards their hotel and promise of food, drink, and modestly-funded celebration. The other soldiers would be awaiting the good news…she saw Xu hand the cell phone over to Squall, and saw him hold the phone away from his ears as loud cheers erupted over the phone. Apparently the crew had gathered in the Esthar lounge to hear the good news. There'd no doubt be a party awaiting them when they returned, and Quistis, though exhausted, found herself looking forward to it. They'd been in the dark far too long. It was time for a little light.

Mostly, however, she just wanted to get out of her heels.

Sirri was struggling against the guards, his face a mottled mixture of fear and rage. His eyes were fixed on her. "I'll have your head for this! You'll be dead in a week! All of you! The dogs will be eating your face in an alley…my assassins will take their time with you, girly, you and that traitor bitch Ceres-"

His speech was cut off by Squall's fist, which had sprung free of his sling to snap Sirri's head back. The wet splinter of cartilage meeting bone was sickeningly sweet in the long hallway, and Sirri slumped in the guard's grasp. More guards came forward to haul the Commander away, who was now gripping his arm in pain.

Squall's eyes met hers. "Bail me out, won't you?" he asked calmly.

Quistis smiled. "Of course."

"He beat me to it!" Rinoa shook her head as she appeared behind her, laughing, and put her hand on Quistis' shoulder as she watched her boyfriend being led off. She waved. "See you soon!"

The rest of the group laughed as the spectators filled out around them.

Ceres, however, cast them a sad look filled with longing as she turned to go out the doors. The others followed after, still unsure of what to make of Arya's…Ceres'…transformation from ally to enemy to savior.

Zell was waiting outside. His jaw was clenched, fists balled at his sides. "All this time…" he said, softly. "All this time you've been dicking us around, pretending-"

Ceres shook her head. "Zell, no, please listen to me. It wasn't like that! I-"

Zell's fists were shaking. "You betrayed us. You betrayed Cid." His face twisted.

"No, Zell! I didn't know about that! Please! I was only doing my job-" She took a step forward.

Zell took a step back, looking at her with cold revulsion. "Which was what? To find the weakest link and crawl into bed with him?"

Ceres recoiled as if he'd slapped her. "It wasn't like that. It…it was **never** like that. Don't you see why I couldn't tell you?" She whispered, tears streaming down her face. "You said…you **said** you loved me. That wasn't a lie, was it?" She reached out to him, and he jerked back.

"Don't touch me." He snapped. "I don't know you. I don't know anything about you. I don't even know your name." Turning, he stalked back into the crowd, storming towards the door.

Quistis started after him, but Rinoa held her back, laying a hand on her arm. "You have a conference in five minutes," she said. "I'll talk to him."

Irvine watched Rinoa go with surprise. "Uh, I'll go too, I guess," he said finally, disappearing.

Ceres stared up at Quistis, her dark eyes shimmering with tears. "Let me help you with Drosskow. Please. I have records…access numbers…"

Quistis didn't respond, but began to walk past her. Even if she had saved their asses, Ceres had also hurt Zell, who was like a brother to her. She was currently unsure of where to place her sympathies.

Ceres grabbed her arm. "Please. Let me go with you, and I'll understand if you never want to speak to me again afterwards."

"Are you sure you're not on another mission for somebody else?" asked Quistis cuttingly.

"I deserved that," said the hacker, tears slipping from her eyes. "I deserve all that and more. But please. Let me help you. Cid was like a father to me, too."

Quistis looked into Ceres eyes, and saw only grief there. Grief, and earnest appealing. Without Ceres' testimony, they still could have taken down Galbadia…but they also likely would have been taken down themselves.

Quistis continued walking. "Fine. Come along. You're lucky this institution specializes in second chances."

…

…

…

**Supreme Council Courtroom, Clerk's Office**

Darwin Drosskow was waiting for her in the small clerk's room of the Supreme Courthouse, glaring at her with enough venom to fell a Marlboro. A few seedy-looking associates were there with him, looking apprehensive.

_Good. Let the bastards sweat_.

Quistis and Arya sat. Serabin, Xu, and Davin Korbeil all filed in behind them, hands clasped. They would act as witnesses.

"May I ask the occasion for this little impromptu meeting, Miss Trepe?" spat Darwin. "To what do I owe the **pleasure**?"

_Pleasure?_ _Drosskow, when I get through with you, you won't know your ass from your elbow._

Quistis offered Drosskow a venomous smile of her own. "This is purely a business meeting, Mr. Drosskow. A typical business meeting involves the transaction of desired goods or services."

"I _know_ what a business deal entails, mercenary." Drosskow folded his hands. "And you want what, precisely? You can certainly understand, Miss Trepe, that the Drosskow Corp. is not inclined to negotiate under the threat of blackmail. My records are completely clean. I'll invite the auditors myself. Besides, you've already dragged my name through the public court. Forgive me if I'm wrong, I do believe you've already exhausted your bargaining power with me."

"I don't doubt that Drosskow Coorp is airtight, Drosskow." Quistis smiled. "But I think the _Xyionn_ organization would be happy to fund Balamb's regenerative endeavors, don't you? You're familiar with Xyionn rather _intimately_, I believe?" Saying so, she held up a disk. In reality, the disk contained nothing more than Irvine, Zell and Gzarth's mission reports…but Drosskow didn't know that.

"Our last op team got quite an inside look at your establishment, Drosskow, as I'm sure you know. In return, their contribution and the operatives of your organization need not be made public. Unless, of course, Xyionn refuses to contribute-"

"_Blackmail_, Miss Trepe? Are you actually blackmailing me?"

Quistis inclined her head "Why, yes. I'm pleased that you've caught on so quickly."

Darwin's lip curled. "Is there no low to which Balamb is not willing to sink?"

Quistis' smile was cutting. "I don't think that the leader of a hedonist society is in a position to lecture others about their methodologies. Don't you agree?"

Arya stood. "Furthermore, Mr. Drosskow, Xyionn uses a rather primitive account transferal system to siphon money from your more affluent members." Arya held up a disk of her own. "Account 595-07182479 of Trabia International, am I correct? I have it in my system as we speak. I could easily put in a line feed to our Balamb accounts. Or, if you refuse, I can have the money scattered to the four corners of the planet, or made public. It's your choice."

"You'll pay for this." Snarled Drosskow.

Quistis' eyes narrowed. "With all due respect, I think you have our roles reversed, Mr. Drosskow. You see, no one in this room is afraid of you. In fact, you are sitting across from a group of the world's finest mercenaries. I should think you would prudently adopt a little fear yourself, lest you become a missing person. People disappear every day, after all." From behind her, both Serabin and Xu exchanged a look…and smiled, both very glad that the woman in front of them was on their side.

"How much?" Came Drosskow's voice, low with defeat.

"I'm so glad you asked." Quistis shifted her weight as she set down a large stack of paperwork, reveling in the pained look on Drosskow and his associates' faces. "Gentlemen. We have a big day ahead of us." A ghost of a smile graced her lips, not friendly but cunning.

"Shall we get down to business?"

…

…

…

She wore her hair down. She liked the weight of it on her back, soft silk between her shoulder blades. She had started to dismantle her suit- the coat and skirt lay draped over a hotel chair, and she'd partially unbuttoned the white shirt and put on a pair of jeans she'd picked up at an Esthar thrift shop. She couldn't remember the last time she'd worn jeans, and enjoyed the casual feel of the fabric against her legs. The others would expect her back at the celebration soon. But, for now, she wanted to change her shoes and take a small break from the festivities.

Cerberus followed her through the small room, tail wagging. Her room hadn't been cleaned in weeks owing to his presence: the maids were scared of the dog, for whatever reason, and refused to come in unless both parties were out of the room. Quistis really couldn't understand why- Cerberus was harmless, really. She was sure that the hotel management didn't want to harbor the dog any more than they wanted the homeless dogs of the Balamb military, but Laguna Loire had ordered that the Balamb soldiers be accommodated at any cost.

For Quistis, 'accommodation' meant having Cerberus with her. The dog had grown on her- he was a solid, warm weight on her feet every night, and a comforting presence by her side during the day. And, she reasoned, if Rinoa could keep Angelo, why couldn't she keep a small pet as well?

Feeling festive, she rummaged around in her mini fridge before selecting a mini-bottle of liquor and pouring it over a complimentary plastic cup filled with ice. She took off her shoes and went out on the small veranda, pressing her feet up onto the iron fence and cooling the swollen appendages against the metal. Cerberus joined her, settling down at her feet with a loud yawn. She scratched him behind the ears before leaning back in her seat.

She stared out at the Estharian skyline, feeling the evening sun burn into her cheeks as it set. The warmth spread through her, and she relaxed for the first time in months.

Esthar was a beautiful city, but her heart wasn't in it. She was anxious to return to Balamb, with its fishing harbors lined up along the ocean, the smell of the salt-spray and the emerald fields stretching on for miles. She loved the quaint little towns scattered around the island, and the people, less hurried, most accustomed and friendly to the military. Even time seemed slower there, less urgent.

She thought of Garden, a thought that pleased her immensely. Plans were already being made. In two weeks, the limited construction crews they could afford to hire would be mobilized, along with all available students and soldiers, who would be doing purely voluntary labor. Everyone would be helping out: Selphie was going to be on the tech committee, along with a few others: Squall would be directing traffic so to speak, and the rest of them had all been put on the labor-crew, and would be painting, helping with wiring, and laying the flooring. Of course, there would be specialists present too: they were simply the (unpaid) grunt work.

She chuckled at Squall's expression when he found out he'd re-fractured his arm fracturing Sirri's face. She'd laughed at him in the hospital, too...she couldn't help it. A cast would have to go on for another eight weeks, ensuring that the Commander would keep his arm still. She remembered the look on his face at the Esthar hospital after being bailed out by both her and Rinoa, when his arm was being slathered in plaster-it was both petulant and mirthful. "It was worth it," he muttered, glaring at the doctor, who was lecturing him for his lack of caution.

Impulsively, she'd leaned over and hugged him for the first time in their lives, and he'd returned it wholeheartedly with his good arm. From behind them, unnoticed, Rinoa smiled, and clasped her hands together.

Quistis signed and slouched in her chair. She was anxious to go home…and surprised she thought of it that way. Still, home was not a structure, or a physical place- it was where her brothers and sisters were, her adopted family- the only family that she had left.

She swirled the ice in her glass and put her bare feet up on the steel banister, savoring the sunset. She let old memories roll over in her mind. Since the coma, she remembered more things….strange, distant things, thin slices of memories that seemed so remote they might have been a part of another, imagined, life. Still, they were pleasant, if faint…

_A woman with strawberry blonde hair, making lemonade in a small, cramped kitchen, singing along to a scratchy record… _

_Chasing Irvine_ _through the garden, weaving through the pillars and laughing… _

_Jumping up and down on a bed, watching a pile of gil waver like a wave and dreaming she was by the ocean... _

_Setting off fireworks in the middle of the night, sneaking back into the house and getting caught anyway... _

_Walking by the water, spinning in circles until the ocean and the sky became a great, wonderful blur-_

_An older man's smile, steady against the sea and sky._

Quistis gazed up at the setting sun, a smile flitting across her tear-stained face. "We did it, Cid…"


	38. Return of the Grey Wolf

**A/N: A couple more chapters after this. Hope you enjoy.**

**My Love Is Like to Ice**

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:  
How come it then that this her cold is so great  
Is not dissolved through my hot desire,  
But harder grows the more I her entreat?  
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat  
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,  
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,  
And feel my flames augmented manifold?  
What more miraculous thing may be told,  
That fire, which is congealed with senseless cold,  
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?  
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,  
That it can alter all the course of kind.

-Edmund Spenser

**Chapter 38- Return of the Grey Wolf**

**Esthar** **Presidential Palace, Esthar **

The chandeliers spilled a scattered, strained gold light down onto the glossed marble floors, and the sound of an orchestra echoed throughout the blue palace. The windows, as high and grand as the ceiling, poured in a blue sky and the sun's dying reflection on the emerald city. Dressed in a beautiful gown and standing in the middle of an elegant palace, a less cynical girl would have felt immersed in a fairy tale. Quistis, however, was as cynical as she was romantic, and so the effect of the palace ended in a draw.

Whether owing to her humble beginnings, her lack of romantic luck, or the childhood she'd spent in upper-class hell, Quistis Trepe held a faint distaste for formal occasions. She did, however, harbor a secret love for dresses and dancing, although she would never willingly admit it. She supposed it was the one good unconscious memory gleaned from the hellish fairy tale life she'd been forced to help uphold for many years, her arms and psyche shaking like Atlas under the dysfunctional household.

When she had dressed up as a little girl, when they had gone to the fancy parties, it had all seemed real…possible, as if she really were a princess waiting for her prince…as if they all were one big happy family and not falling apart at the seams.

A fairy tale.

Tonight, with all its glittering chandeliers and marble walls, seemed every bit the stage for such a thing. Still, she couldn't help but think of a celebration three years ago, and of a father figure dressed in a red vest, toasting the camera with a glass of champagne. That time seemed far away now, as well as the girl that had lived it.

Quistis sighed, gazing out at the sea of politicians and over-dressed mercenaries. Time to play the part of political princess… even if she felt more like a toad stuffed into eveningwear.

The dress she wore was on loan from an Estharian boutique courtesy of Laguna Loire, and, Quistis was willing to bet, worth more than anything she had ever owned, save possibly Save the Queen. Save the Queen, however, was the result of many years of saving, sweat, and the ripping apart of various beasts to find salvageable tendons or sinew to wind into the weapon.

Save the Queen was one of the few belongings she still possessed after B. Garden's collapse- it had been recovered on the Estharian battlefield. She could still remember sitting up nights in her early years at garden, winding oil into the hard thong of T-Rexaur tendon and Wendigo leather to keep it supple. It was all she'd been able to afford and even now, the whip held a kind of nostalgia for her. She was glad to have it back.

They had salvaged what they could from Garden's scorched and hollow belly, searching through the dormitories for anything that they recognized as theirs. Quistis had managed to salvage a few pictures with the frames cracked, a few pieces of clothing, and found half of her sofa two miles west of the initial crash site. Most records and possessions had been destroyed, although she did hold out hope that the recovery crew would find a few of the things on the inventory lists they'd been encouraged to make. In the meantime, however, local museums were clamoring for artifacts in the wreck from the LIBERI FATALI…it looked like even the media had gotten their hands on the phrase as well. It was rather disconcerting to Quistis that her belongings could end up in a memorial, with or without her consent. Balamb already sported an embarrassingly large memorial from the Second Sorceress War which featured herself, Squall, Selphie, Zell, Irvine and Rinoa, all made of bronze and looking stoic as they gazed out into the town square. Quistis, her eyes still stinging from all the camera flashes, found she had had quite enough of fame, thank you, and was fairly sure her friends felt the same.

The tabloids were also running stories constantly- QUISTIS TREPE: ALIEN SAVIOR SENT TO EARTH and CID KRAMER: MAFIA RINGLEADER LIVES, and, her personal favorite SEIFER ALMASY: ZOMBIE SPOTTED ON BALAMB COAST. She'd never been much for the attention, herself, and looked forward to the day when the media moved onto another subject. Fortunately, Laguna's guest list included only a few respectable media figures, so they could count on more political than social coverage.

Quistis gingerly felt at her headpiece, a shining collection of beautifully bent silver that curved above her ears and dripped small, hanging crystals down next to her hairpins. It hung like finely crafted icicles in her hair, complimenting the color of the dress. She'd opened her hotel suite to find the headpiece and a dress tag on a hanger in her closet that was redeemable at the local shoppe, courtesy of the President of Esthar. Laguna Loire had apparently thrown a ball only to realize that the guests of honor had nothing suitable to wear to it. As a result, the local boutiques had been called in and ordered to fit the temporarily homeless (and clothing-less) soldiers. She wasn't sure why Laguna had given her the beautiful hairpiece, but she gratefully accepted it all the same.

She'd gone to Rinoa and Selphie's room, only to find that they'd been the recipients of the tickets as well. The three had smiled, shrugged, and decided to accept in the spirit of things. In just another day, they'd all be garbed in coveralls and slathered in oil and sawdust, jumping off the rebuilding efforts back in Balamb. There would be a decided lack of crab cakes, champagne flutes, and fancy ballrooms after tonight. In fact, there would be a decided lack of everything, including wages, after tonight.

"When in Esthar…" Selphie had said, shrugging.

And so, wearing the same clothing they'd been wearing for the past two days, they'd ventured down to the dress boutique (the only one left standing), and, clueless in the world of fashion, she'd allowed her friends to select a gown for her. Rinoa had prowled the shop before holding up the blue silk dress to her, squinting before nodding.

"It sets off your eyes!" she'd exclaimed.

"What are you wearing?" she'd asked, glancing over her shoulder as Rinoa laced her up the back. Her friend grinned, gesturing to the beautiful dress she was wearing. "It's an overpriced red velvet cut, backless with a side slit. We'll be like royalty! I'll be the red Queen, and you can be the blue, Quisty!" Her friend twirled, and the red dress twirled with her- she was a blur of blood and raven hair.

**I'll be the red queen…and you can be the blue….**

A shudder passed through her suddenly, and Rinoa frowned. "What's wrong?"

Quistis turned around, frowning. "Nothing." And then she saw the dress, and almost didn't recognize herself in the mirror. It was beautiful, the most beautiful piece of clothing she had ever owned, and though she couldn't imagine ever having an excuse to wear something this elaborate again, it would be nice for one night to put it on, to pretend…

"Have you been sleeping well?"

"Fine," replied Quistis.

It was a terrible lie, and Rinoa knew it, but her friend hadn't had time to press her. Selphie, in her typical disregard for others' privacy, had burst in with ten different dresses, begging them to help her choose. Eventually, Selphie had decided on a beautiful green gown, and, their purchases slipped into plastic protective sheaths, they went to lunch at an expensive restaurant and split an entire chocolate mousse cake between the three of them before picking out suitable shoes.

Quistis picked up the hem of her evening gown took a long swig of champagne as she headed across the floor, looking for Rinoa's red-clad form in the crowd. The crystal icicles from her headdress brushed her shoulders as she moved- her own dress was a strapless cut, the color of a summer sky. The woman from the shop had called it a 'Crinkle silke Trabian ombre dress, with a shirred bodice with boning and back hooks'. The fancy terminology made her nervous.

The skirt of the dress was a silk whisper against the floor, the bodice backless and held up by some miracle of chest or gravity, she wasn't sure which. The only thing Quistis knew for certain was that the dress was definitely staying _on_, and that she might eventually have to employ help to get it _off_. Rinoa and Selphie had combined their powers of tugging in a joint effort to close the back hooks, and she'd had to literally stuff her somewhat generous bosom into the 'shirred bodice'. _My cup runneth over_, she thought, and suppressed a laugh.

_Too much champagne, Quistis._ _Time to cut back._

She turned and continued the search for her friends, who were entirely to blame for her current state. Rinoa and Selphie had cornered her in the Estharian Inn and curled her hair, pinning it back in a shimmering cascade of curls and applying some make-up to her cheeks, lips and eyes. She sat through it good-naturedly, enjoying her friend's presence more so than their attempts at beautification. Selphie had also brought a bottle of Fisherman's Best Whiskey, and they'd taken generous swigs as they worked. By the time they were finished, they had all staggered out of the hotel room, giggling and tripping over their skirts. Even Xu had allowed herself to be pampered, but Quistis thought that owed more to the gallon of brandy that she and Serabin had been toasting over all afternoon than her desire to 'look pretty.'

Come to think of it, Xu's reasons, thought Quistis, probably had to do more with strategy than vanity. The new Balamb Headmaster was excited about all the politics and influence that would be filling out dance cards at the gala, and intended to schmooze as many as possible. She'd also recruited Quistis for the job, saying, "Brains, beauty, and a full bodice, Quistis…key to any politician's heart and, more importantly, his pocketbook."

And they needed as many additional pocketbooks as they could find for the reconstruction efforts. The new shield system alone was going to cost millions of gil, and the more signed contracts, the more pay advances, the better.

"Besides," her friend had added, smiling, "Nothing with lower hanging parts could refuse you in that dress."

_Leave it to Xu to strategize in formal wear._

Quistis herself never thought much about her own looks, chalking them up more to accident than effort. Beauty, in Quistis' case, had never attracted anything useful. She still avoided mirrors, a lingering fear born of returning flashbacks, of her own horrified face staring back as her stepmother held a shard to her neck. When her friends said she looked beautiful, she simply smiled, thanked them, and took their word for it.

Besides Xu, both Rinoa and Selphie had been excited about the impromptu gala, and even Quistis agreed that the party had been an excellent idea to promote media coverage and to raise spirits. This was as much a celebration of the un-shielding of Esthar as it was a celebration of the resolution of the Third Sorceress War, after all.

It was also a strategy meeting with dancing and drinks…a pleasant change from the coffee-binge-all-nighter's she'd routinely pulled the night before a mission. Still, she somehow couldn't get her own spirits raised to match her friends' enthusiasm…her own happiness seemed hollow, as if crucial (nameless) pieces (or persons) were missing from it.

Cerberus trotted at her side, a red bow looped around his thick neck to prevent the other guests from thinking that a Wendigo-hybrid had invaded the palace (and to prevent the subsequent hysteria that was sure to follow). Dogs were not a common site in the Estharian palace, but for the purposes of celebration, both Angelo and Cerberus had been allowed to attend. Quistis was relieved to find out that after a brief bout of sniffing, neither dog seemed particularly interested in the other or that, at least, they seemed for the moment more interested in the food. Cerberus was roughly twice the size of Rinoa's dog, and Quistis was fairly certain, should a fight erupt, that Rinoa would be out a custom limit break or two.

Angelo was the very picture of impeccable training: she stuck like glue to Rinoa's side, obedient, well-groomed, and well-mannered. Cerberus, however, had already managed to get into one of the layered cakes after chasing an unfortunate violinist across the ballroom, and though Quistis had spent an hour diligently picking frosted flowers out of his short, dark hair, and apologizing to the kitchen staff, the dog still had a…sugar-coated look to him and a guilty look in his eye. After being reprimanded by Quistis (as the head chef hid behind her, trembling), Cerberus had apparently decided to stay close to Quistis' side (and out of trouble), following his mistress around the ballroom and growling at any waltzers that came too close. He looked up at her now, sitting handsomely, his pink tongue lolling out of his mouth as he wagged his tail at her as if to say, "Look at how good I'm being!"

Quistis reached down and scratched him between the ears before noticing her friends, who were waving her over.

Zell, Irvine, Selphie, and Rinoa were all seated around a circular table, half-buried in empty champagne glasses, dinner plates and surrounded by rubber Estharian fir trees. Quistis took a seat between Irvine and Rinoa.

"We're taking a break from the festivities," explained Rinoa, propping her feet up on a potted plant.

"Yeah, some festivities, my hand was gonna fall off from all the shakin'," said Irvine, holding up his glass to be refilled by a passing waiter. "Why's it when Xu's in charge of a party, we wind up doing more work than we have all year?"

"Where's Squall?" asked Quistis, after looking around the ballroom to try to locate their missing member.

Rinoa smiled, her cheeks rosy with champagne as she did her (still terrible) version of a wink. The young woman looked stunning in the sparkling red gown that fell to the floor in sweeps of crimson silk, complimented by a velvet black choker wound around her slender throat. She looked like some sort of ethereal dark angel, her hair pinned and framing her face in shining coils, her eyes dark and glittering in the speckled chandelier lights.

The two women smiled at one another, and Quistis felt warmth rise in her chest with affection for her friend.

"Here." Replied one of the rubber plants. Cerberus barked, and Quistis let out a squeak of surprise, nearly tumbling out of her chair.

"Shhhh!" came the hiss between the plastic leaves. "Do you want to give me away?"

Startled, Quistis peered behind Rinoa to see the Commander peeking out behind a particularly large rubber leaf. "What's he doing back there?" she asked.

Rinoa laughed. "Hiding from Xu," said the young sorceress, pointing to where Balamb's new headmaster was standing, dressed in a stunning black cocktail dress and smiling winningly at a clearly intoxicated Estharian senator, handing him yet another glass of champagne as she tucked her black purse under her arm. Quistis smiled and shook her head at her friend, remembering their conversation from earlier.

_Walking down the hall with Xu, her friend eyeing her black sequined purse distastefully._

"_What the hell are women supposed to put in these stupid little bags?" she growled. "They're as useless as this dress. Can't run…kick…have a hell of a time chasing any terrorists down-" _

"_There aren't going to be terrorists at this party, Xu. Laguna's armed the palace to the teeth with security precautions, and it's a VIP only guest list." _

"_So you say. I still hate the purse." _

"_Well, why bring the purse along then?"_

"_It came with the outfit," replied her friend stubbornly. It matches the dress. _

_Quistis rolled her eyes. "Well, what did you put in it then?"_

"_Well, all I could fit in it was my Razorback 9-"_

"_You put a hand pistol in your purse?! To bring to a ball?"_

_Xu looked positively indignant. "Well I couldn't very well fit my Negotiator hand models inside, could I?"_

Quistis wondered if the Estharian senator would look so relaxed if he knew about the gun in the young woman's purse.

"Anyway, Xu wants him to help coerce the politicians into some more contracts, and out of some more money." Said Rinoa.

"I know," said Quistis ruefully, "She tried to recruit me, too."

"The last thing I want to do is to try to talk more politics with some greasy politician," muttered the commander. "I've had enough of politics to last a lifetime. No, make that two lifetimes...three…four…"

"It can't be _that_ bad." Chuckled Rinoa. "Xu seems to be doing pretty well at it, in fact." Sure enough, Senator Baldwin was laughing, toasting a now smugly smiling Xu. Quistis could almost see Xu's inner cogs turning, adding another contract and another pocketbook for the rebuilding efforts.

"Just don't tell her where I am." Came the mutter.

"And where should we say you are?" asked Quistis, bemused.

The plant paused. "I don't know…tell her I died. Whatever."

Rinoa and Quistis exchanged a look, rolling their eyes before tuning into the other conversations around them.

"-going to bring popcorn," said Irvine, raising his champagne glass in a toast. "I want a front row seat when that son 'f a bitch goes down."

"What's he talking about?" asked Quistis.

Selphie glanced over, looking up from the video camera in her lap. "The Supreme Council just made an announcement from the D-District prisons."

"An' what a great announcement!" added Irvine, after downing his champagne. "Glyphias senior, sentenced to life in prison. Drake Sirri, convicted of fraud, extortion, espionage, laundering, treason, conspiracy to commit murder and Nida Xiong, convicted of espionage, murder 2, fraud, both sentenced to death by firin' squad! I'll get myself front row seats, popcorn, hell, soda, why not-"

Aside from Seifer, Nida's betrayal was unprecedented in Garden's history, and the group was divided in their feelings. Squall, Selphie and Irvine wanted justice, whereas Quistis, Zell and Rinoa, though angry, maintained a kind of distant pity for the young man, which mixed poorly with their feelings of anger and resentment.

Cerberus plunked his massive head in Quistis's lap just then, interrupting her thoughts. It was almost as if the dog could sense every anxiety that bubbled in her mind, and responded to it- it was like having a sympathetic heating blanket.

"This darn thing…" muttered Selphie, trying to shake her video camera on. Secretly, Quistis hoped the contraption was broken. Most of Selphie's recent taping at the Esthar Inn could be construed as 'blackmail footage', which included a scene of Quistis in her pajamas, chasing after her friend with a pillow and yelling about disturbing people's sleep.

Irving interrupted her thoughts of camera sabotage. "C'mon Zell, man, cheer up! Like, it's a celebration, not a damned funeral!" exclaimed the gunslinger, clapping his friend on the back.

Zell, however, sat quietly, staring miserably into his champagne glass as if it held the answers to all the world's problems.

"Poor Zell," muttered Selphie, shaking her head as she glared at her camera. "He's been like this since the trial."

Quistis couldn't blame him. If 'Arya's' unveiling had shocked _her_, she could only imagine how her friend felt.

Quistis looked down into the ruby-colored eyes of her dog, and patted his neck. If anyone needed Cerberus' plus-sized version of comfort, it was Zell. "Go by Zell," she said quietly, pointing at her friend. "Zell." The dog cocked his head, then trotted slowly over to Zell, nudging the martial arts master until he absently reached over to pet him. As the dog was table-height anyway, he didn't have to reach very far.

Xu chose that moment to walk over, and Quistis could swear she saw the plant cringe out of the corner of her eye.

"Have any of you seen Squall?" she asked, her dark eyes narrowing. "He's supposed to help me cull the political herds, but I haven't been able to locate him."

Everyone at the table became suddenly busy.

"Haven't seen 'em," Irvine whistled, studying the ceiling.

"No Squall here," sighed Zell, still petting Cerberus.

"Gee, I haven't seen him, Xu…" Selphie's eyes widened innocently.

"Squall? Squall who?" asked Rinoa, suppressing a giggle behind her hand.

"Squall? I heard he was recently deceased." Said Quistis solemnly.

"Yes. Death by schmoozing," added Selphie, looking crestfallen.

Irving nodded. "A moment of silence, then, for our deceased commander and friend."

"He died doing what he hated," added Rinoa.

"May his soul rest in peace, and not become part of the undead armies that walk the earth, in search of brains," sobbed Irvine, holding his fist in front of his mouth.

"A moment of silence," repeated Quistis, looking somber.

The five bowed their heads, staring solemnly at the tablecloth before bursting into laughter.

Xu rolled her eyes. "Wonderful. I need political tacticians and I've got a table full of comedians. Live it up, all of you. You'll all be shoveling plaster in two days."

A collective groan rose up.

Xu ignored them. "I've got Senator Noire over there, waiting. Esthar wants a section to the North cleared of vermin once we're up and running." She squinted at the rubber plant. "Squall, get your ass out here and help me draw up a joint contract with Trabia Garden, or you really _will_ need a eulogy."

Muttering, Squall emerged from behind the plant as gracefully and indignantly as possible. "Some help you are," he muttered at all of them, slouching behind Xu as she disappeared into the fray of politicians, or as Irvine liked to call it, the 'Perpetual Sea of Windbags'.

Rinoa laughed. "I suppose I'd better go and play 'dutiful arm decoration.' Can't miss an opportunity to improve 'sorceress relations'." Rolling her eyes, the raven-haired girl got up, and in a swish of crimson satin, also disappeared.

Selphie sighed. "I suppose we should really go and play nice with the other kids, too. Besides, I think I saw some crab cakes at the refreshment table with my name on 'em. C'mon, Irvy. I'm not going out there alone." Mumbling, the cowboy trailed after his girlfriend, casting a rueful look back at his half-eaten plate of chicken as he was dragged away. Lunging, he managed to grab a drumstick before Selphie dragged him into the crowd.

Moving closer to the chair beside her friend, Quistis laid a hand on Zell's arm. "Zell…"

_Truthfully, what could she say? _

"Ceres may not have been who you thought she was, but I don't doubt that she cared for you."

"Whatever." Zell continued to stare at his glass. "She's a spy. She was trained to lie to all of us…I was…. just the weakest link, that's all."

"Zell, she fooled _all_ of us." Quistis shook her head. "Besides, without Ceres, we wouldn't be here right now. Whatever she was sent there to do, she changed her mind. You probably had something to do with that."

Zell looked up, his intense blue eyes hard with pain. "Yeah…sure, thanks Quistis."

"Zell…just because the person you loved isn't the person you thought they were entirely…." Quistis trailed off, unsure of how to organize her thoughts.

_Squall, sitting in her hospital room, staring out the window._ "_Almasy…before… was too focused, too driven…like there was some fire in him that was burning him hollow…burning him alive. He didn't care who he had to step on to get where he was going…I doubt he even _**knew** _where he was going in the first place. None of us ever did, did we?" _

"_But when I saw him for the last time, up in Galbadia_ _Garden_…_he looked…the same. Like it was that same fire inside him, the same drive. He was standing in front of Adel with his sword drawn, looking crazy. When he swung at me, I thought…I was sure….he was going to kill me. But he didn't...he fooled all of us…even Adel.. It was like something inside him had shifted…like all that fire finally had a direction. Whatever you taught him, Quistis…he was different." _

"_But I…I didn't teach him anything, Squall."_

_Squall shook his head, smiling. "Not out of a SeeD manual, but yeah, I think you taught him more than anyone else ever had." _

_It was the only gift Squall could give her…the gift of his death, told cleanly and with no prejudice. It was the culmination of his life, laid out like a memoir on the white parchment of a military document…laid out like a corpse, cold and clean…a pure truth, the only truth she could understand about him and what he'd done. _

_The rest of it…didn't make any sense. _

_Siphoned the poison off of her…carried her back…stayed by her side till they left for …_

…_told her it was just another night… _

_Did you ever really know a person…or simply recognize some of their joys and their shadows as your own?_

When she spoke again, it was softer, fragile. "What we loved in them, what we saw…wasn't that the truth? Would we have loved a lie if it wasn't wonderful? Would we have loved them if…if there wasn't something good in them to love?"

Unconsciously, she had shifted to a miserable plural, but Zell had picked up on it and placed his hand over hers.

He forced a smile. "Thanks, Quistis. Really. I think I'm gonna take a walk, try and clear my head."

"Take Ceberus with you, would you?" asked Quistis. "He'll keep you company. Keep him away from the orchestra, though."

_That violinist looked shaky enough already… _

Zell shrugged. "He'll keep my dance card open, that's for sure." With that, Zell stood up, and, still wearing his leg cast, hobbled into the crowd. He'd had to cover up the cast by wearing pants with wide legs, as Irvine had contributed some profane art to it while he had fallen asleep in the hospital one night. As it was, the cast was no longer suited for parties, his mother's house, or civil society in general.

Quistis watched her friend limp away, his shoulders slumped. At her urging, Cerberus trotted along, growling at a cellist as he went. The cellist, terrified, lost his concentration and sent his bow flying across the room, which landed in a platter of beef pate and splattered sauce over several guests.

_Maybe an orchestra offended the dog in a past life_, thought Quistis, wincing.

Sighing, she twirled her finger along the rim of a champagne glass, listening to the faint, crystal ring the flute procured. Maybe she'd go out there with the rest of her friends, and help Xu with her contract quota. Or maybe she'd sneak out on the balcony, and watch the sunset…

A voice startled her out of her quiet reverie.

"Quistis?"

_Serabin_. She turned around, craning her neck to gaze up at his tall, elegant form. He was dressed in his military jacket tonight, the brightly colored bars and medals clanging together as he bent over. Across the room, Quistis could see several pairs of female eyes follow his movement.

He smiled down at her, gently taking her gloved hand and brushing his lips across it. "You look beautiful this evening."

Color rose in her cheeks.

_Would she ever become accustomed to being told that? _

_Probably not._

"Um," she flushed. "So…do you." The man created constant butterflies in her stomach. If he had engaged her in a professional capacity, she would have met him evenly, with absolute calm and composure. But being…romanced…was entirely new territory for Quistis, and she was sorry to find that she stumbled through it more often than not.

The young man in front of her raised an eyebrow. "Thank you," he replied, his smile amused.

It took her a minute to realize she'd called him beautiful…She flushed. "I didn't…"

"It's all right. I'm glad you wore the headpiece. It suits you."

"It…that was you?" she asked, unconsciously bringing her hand up to feel the delicate silver chains. "I…Serabin, thank you. It's lovely."

The Galbadian Headmaster simply smiled. "No thanks necessary. Every queen should have a crown."

Blushing, she looked down, which only made Serabin's smile widen. She was charming when she was flustered. "You do look lovely tonight, Quistis."

She smiled back this time. "Didn't you know? Looks are an accident, Headmaster Glyphias."

He laughed. "Well then, you are 'accidentally' stunning. Dance with me."

She raised an eyebrow at him, more playful than clumsy now in her recovery. "You'll have to get in line. Haven't you seen my dance card?"

"No room for an old comrade?" he asked, feigning distress.

"Well, I _could_ squeeze you in between the obstinate Trabian senator and the grab-ass Dolletian war veteran," she replied, smiling. "But it'll cost you."

Serabin laughed. "Well, Miss Trepe, I'm a very determined man," he said jokingly. "Consider your dance card confiscated."

"How can I argue with that?" asked Quistis, getting to her feet.

"You can't," replied Serabin smoothly. His smile faded, and again he held out his hand. "One last dance, and then I'm afraid I've a plane waiting on me."

"And about half a dozen women, waiting on you in that corner," said Quistis, laughing as she took his hand.

"Were there other women here?" asked Serabin, lifting an eyebrow. "I hadn't noticed."

That was the thing about Serabin. He always knew the right thing to say, and said it at precisely the right time. Unlike Seifer, who usually came up with the wrong thing to say, and picked the worst possible moment to say it.

_Stop it, you promised you wouldn't think of him tonight._

Smiling, Serabin led her out onto the floor, spinning her in a swish of blue silk. The orchestra began a new song, a lilting tremor of reed and string that made her heart thrum a little faster, that made the illusion of a fairy tale seem a little more real.

Serabin entwined their hands, and fit his hand into her side. "You look like a queen of Atlantica…what was it they called you, years ago? The Blue Sorceress, in honor of your field of study? You look every bit the part this evening."

She laughed. "Not anymore. I wouldn't pass a JC level casting exam, now."

The band began to play, a bold blare of string and reed. She remembered the specific waltz from her social etiquette class, years ago. Her feet fell into step easily, without thought.

"So what do you plan to do at Balamb Garden, now?" he asked, turning her.

"Squall offered me your job, actually," she said, smiling. "Head Instructor."

"There's no one more qualified," responded Serabin. "You'd do an excellent job."

"Dr. Kadowaki also made me a proposal as well…she's looking for an apprentice. She'd take me under, and during the next few years, she'd teach me herself. She has teaching credentials under military medicine, so I'd be able to obtain my certification at Garden, or so she says. I think this last war affected her…she wants to retire as soon as she's trained a replacement."

"And this appeals to you? Being a healer?"

"In a way. We've dealt in destruction since we were kids, most of us. It might be nice to be on the other side, for a change. Besides," she shifted. "I couldn't be an effective teacher, not anymore. I don't want anyone to have to stand where I've stood…to see what I've seen. There's no way to prepare a person for that."

"Unfortunately, there will always be others that will come to take our place. They'll still need to learn, Quistis."

"Yes. But not from me." She said, shaking her head. "Not anymore. And Kadowaki's offer…it would be…something different." She paused, looking up into his eyes. "How are your…_tests_…going?"

"Slowly. They've decided to increase the frequency of the injections to once a week."

"But how are _you_? Your eyes…" Indeed, she had noticed that something about his gaze seemed amiss…different. A cold, dulled look had poured into them as of late, and his eyes were less inviting, and more…distant.

He smiled, and spun her.

"Ah. You're noticing the color change, I think. A temporary side affect of gradual mag-poisoning, or so they tell me. Something to do with a subtle enzymatic change in the body, no more harmful than any other small scale shift that occurs during regular human growth and development. It would have naturally occurred in you during your mag-poisoning as well, but I'm sure you didn't notice it, as your eye color was already blue." Serabin smiled ruefully. "But I'm…fine. It's thoughtful of you to ask."

"I heard about your father." She said quietly. "I'm sorry….it must be difficult."

Serabin just shook his head. "No apologies necessary. I was adopted by the Glyphias family when I was very young, from an orphanage in Trabia. I don't remember my original parents, and there are no records. My father wanted an 'instant family' to bring to all the government galas, my mother didn't want to ruin her figure by actually having children. I had the coloring to match theirs and learned early how to behave at political functions, so it worked out for all parties involved…for a time."

Quistis could relate.

"Our family was never warm, or affectionate. Still, they provided for me, trips and toys and the finest boarding schools. And when I wished to enroll in Garden, they supported me. My father, no doubt, saw it as an extra opening to spread his influence. I always hated politics, while Harven embraced them." His eyes, preoccupied, stared down into hers. "At the sentencing, Harven will receive nothing more than what he deserves, and nothing less. We differed on many things, but I suppose in some way, he was like a father to me."

He spun her, and a small forced its way into the corners of his mouth. "But this is a celebration. We should think of what we still possess, rather than what lies behind us."

"…you're right," she said, quietly.

"My offer still stands, Quistis."

She looked away. "It's a generous offer…I-"

_You're a good man, Serabin._

"You'll consider it, then."

She couldn't quite meet his eyes. "Serabin-"

"The offer will always be there, Quistis, should you desire it, and so will I."

"I won't ask you to wait. I can't…"

He spun her again, his hand gentle at her waist. "And you haven't. I do it freely."

"Why?"

"You know why." He said, his gaze serious.

He stopped, suddenly, gazing down into her eyes with such intensity that it held her still. She wanted nothing more in that moment to be able to love him as he deserved, to take his hand and accept his offer…to move forward out of the shadows that surrounded her and into a future that didn't involve old ghosts and empty rooms.

_If I had known you sooner….if I had known you first…_

…_then maybe things could be different._

"Just think about it, Quistis," he said quietly. "I shall always be waiting to be of use to you, in whatever capacity you should desire."

He kissed her cheek and left her in the middle of the dance floor, the strings' last vibrations fading to silence and the words she longed to say still trapped behind her lips, lodged forever somewhere in her heart.

*

…

…

…

Seifer did not consider himself an expert on fairy tales, but he did have a vague idea of how they were supposed to play out. The dashing hero waltzed into the palace, ran up the stairs, and kissed the fair maiden before dragging her off to his castle made out of sugar and rainbows or whatever the hell it was.

He quickly found out that there were several things wrong (and stupid) with applying a fairy tale to real life.

_One, he was _**not** _a dashing hero._

_Two, the Estharian_ _Palace_ _was a metal maze teeming with inept guards._

_Three, according to said inept guards, he apparently wasn't going to be 'waltzing' anywhere._

_Lastly, he had no idea where the 'fair maiden' was._

The Estharian Palace looked different and was better guarded than he remembered. Four men, armed to the teeth, were stationed both outside and inside shining emerald gates, holding rifles and looking as if they'd been chiseled out of stone.

Sighing, Seifer threw his gun belt over his shoulder and approached. Couldn't one damned thing be easy in his life?

He thought for one blissful moment that the guards might actually let him pass, no questions asked. True to his luck, however, one of the guards threw out his hand as another took aim.

Looking down, Seifer could see a laser sight swaying gently against his chest.

Must be the sword. Indeed, Helio's gleaming blade, arcing out from behind his trench coat, _did_ look a little foreboding.

_Warm welcomes, wherever I go_.

"Halt. There are no persons or weapons allowed within the Estharian Palace without sufficient ID or permit."

"Weapon?" Seifer raised an eyebrow. "This is just my decorative walking stick, gentlemen."

The man with the gun trained on his heart gave a derisive snort.

"Hand over your ID or permit, sir."

Seifer shrugged. "Sorry, gentlemen. I seem to have left them in my other coat."

The first guard did not look amused. "I'll have your weapon, sir, with or without a bullet in your head. Hand it over, and come with me."

Seifer briefly entertained the thought of taking the palace by storm, tossing out a few fira spells and making a break for it. However, that probably wasn't going to get him far, and it probably wouldn't put him in Quistis' good graces if he literally crashed the party.

Instead, he unshouldered his blade and handed it to one of the sentries, muttering.

"Now, identify yourself." The other two guards from the inner doors were now approaching. Great. He'd attracted an audience.

Seifer narrowed his eyes, smiling. "I'm a guest of the Loire gala."

"Do you have an invitation?"

"Would you believe it?" He gave them a winning smile. "I left it at home."

Obviously, the guard wasn't buying it. "State your name."

_Right._ _If I state my name, they'll _**never** _let me in. _

_Maybe I could crawl through the waste ducts…_

Seifer shifted his weight impatiently. "I'm here to see Quistis Trepe."

"Miss Trepe is under the protection of Estharian security. What is your business with her?"

"My own." snapped Seifer.

The man rolled his eyes. "As I am a guard of the Estharian palace, sir, you'll understand why I can't let everyone with _personal business_ through."

The other guard glanced over at him. "President Loire's gala is invite-only. Again, what is your name?"

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Dick Trickle."

The soldiers looked as if they had a sense of humor that was about as low-caliber as their weapons. "We don't have all day to fool around."

"Could've fooled me. You are, after all, guarding an immovable object."

Three red dots on his chest now, all wavering over his heart.

"Your real name."

He sighed. "Seifer Almasy."

The soldiers studied him a moment, then exchanged a long look.

"What'd y' think, Braiser? He kinda looks like 'im, yeah?"

The other soldier didn't take his eyes or gun off of the target standing in front of him. "Almasy's deader than a doornail. They didn't find anything bigger than a toilet seat at the Galbadian crash site."

"Well, yeah, but who'd actually _claim_ to be Seifer Almasy if he wasn't 'im?"

"Yeah, I guess," said another soldier. "A guy'd have to be crazy."

Seifer, exasperated, rolled his eyes.

"Why's he here then?" asked the fourth guard under his breath.

"T'kill people? T'eat some cake? How the hell would I know?!" hissed the first.

"Well, if this's really Seifer Almasy, I'm collecting on the Galbadian bounty on his head."

_Bounty?_ _Figured._

"**YOU** are? Fat chance. I saw 'im first." Said another soldier.

Seifer wondered if he could just walk past the squabbling guards and into the palace.

"Get back." Snarled one, disengaging the safety from his weapon.

_Nope. _

"Go and get Kiros," muttered the second, before raising his weapon. The other soldier nodded, then quickly went through the doors.

"Put your hands up," ordered the first soldier, his weapon now trained somewhere on Seifer's skull. "Do it now."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "What, are you going to arrest a dead man?"

"I'll be burying one if you don't put your hands up."

"This day just keeps getting better and better," muttered Seifer, slowly raising his hands in the air. There was no way he'd get Helios back now that the guard had left with it…unless the sword had a boomerang feature he didn't know about.

_Damnitall._

_Real life fairy tales sucked._

*


	39. Reunions

A/N: Thanks to those of you that have made it this far.

He drowns in his dreams  
An exquisite extreme I know  
He's as damned as he seems but  
More heaven than a heart could hold

And if I tried to save him  
My whole world could cave in  
It just ain't right  
Lord, it just ain't right

Oh and I don't know  
I don't know what he's after  
But he's so beautiful  
He's such a beautiful disaster  
And if I could hold on  
Through the tears and the laughter  
Lord would it be beautiful  
Or just a beautiful disaster?

He's magic and myth  
He's strong as what I believe  
A tragedy with  
More damage than a soul should see  
But do I try to change him?  
It's so hard not to blame him  
Hold me tight  
Baby, hold me tight

Oh and I don't know  
I don't know what he's after  
But he's so beautiful  
He's such a beautiful disaster  
And if I could hold on  
Through the tears and the laughter  
Would it be beautiful  
Or just a beautiful disaster?

I'm longing for love and the logical  
But he's only happy, hysterical  
I'm searching for some kind of miracle  
Waiting so long  
I've waited so long

He's soft to the touch  
But frayed at the ends he breaks  
He's never enough  
And still he's more than I can take

Oh and I don't know  
I don't know what he's after  
But he's so beautiful  
He's such a beautiful disaster  
And if I could hold on  
Through the tears and the laughter  
Would it be beautiful  
Or just a beautiful disaster -Beautiful Disaster, K.C. (try the live version)- I thought this song was particularly appropriate for Seifer's character, don't you?

*

…

…

Within Quistis' internal debate between schmoozing politicians as she was expected, or playing hookey to watch the sun set, Quistis' inner child eventually won out. Quistis Trepe's inner child was a half-dead entity on the best of days, and a force she had resolutely repressed for years: tonight, she blamed the enigma's appearance on the champagne.

Bowing her head and gathering up her train, Quistis slipped past the routine of smiling, exchanging toasts, and dodging Selphie's camera, walked to the balcony to enjoy a breath of fresh air.

Quistis found Arya…or…Ceres, on the balcony, dressed in a beautiful golden gown and bawling her eyes out. The sight of her former friend and ally sprawled out on the balcony furniture derailed her own depressing train of thought and replaced it with surprise.

Ceres was slumped in one of the ornate metal chairs, surrounded by crumpled tissues. Her dark hair was loose around her face instead of its usual pigtail, stuck to her cheeks with tears. She would have been lovely, if her make-up wasn't running in rivulets down her face. Quistis was torn with the desire to flee and the desire to comfort. It wasn't as if she had a lot of experience with either. It was Ceres, looking up, who made the decision for her.

"Oh, ids you, Guisdis. Squall bade be cob," she sniffled. "Bud I dode gnow whad I'd doig here."

She looked up at Quistis, hiccupping. "I cad go bag do Galbadia, you doe….dey'll gill bee, you herd dem…ad I cad stay here….Zell hades beeeeeee.." sinking into her chair, she dissolved into tears again.

Sympathy finally won out over her previous anger, and she knelt by Ceres, handing her a tissue from the box at the girl's feet. "Here, blow your nose," she said kindly. The girl obliged, and Quistis winced at the sound before handing her another tissue.

"Ary-Ceres, if it weren't for all your help, none of us would be able to attend a celebration today. What you did…wasn't easy. Cid would have been proud of you."

Ceres sniffled. "You hab do know," she said, "Thad I didn't gnow about whad they did to Cid. Whad dey pladd to do. I didn't gnow…I would hab stobbed id, if I could hab. I'b so sorry, Kuisdis. I really ab."

Quistis didn't know why, but she believed her.

Ceres wrinkled her latest tissue in her hands. "I dode gnow where to go dow." She blew her nose. "My family…has been dead for bany gears and I-I-"

"We'll figure something out." Quistis took Ceres' hand. "Come on. We'll find the champagne and drink like Balamb sailors."

Ceres managed a shaky smile, sniffling again. "Ub, geeyeah…ogay." She wiped her hand across her eye. "Thags for belibing bee, Quddis, I really abbreciate id."

Just as the two girls were headed inside, Zell approached. His hair was un-gelled, for once, and it fell handsomely across his forehead. His gaze alternated between the two ladies, nervous. "I, uh, Cerberus is following Angelo around, Quistis…Rinoa said it was okay, so…"

"Uh, Ary…Ceres…you look nice," he said, awkwardly.

She looked down at the floor, studying her shoes. "I…thag gu, Zell." She sniffled.

Quistis resisted the urge to smack their heads together. She supposed that wasn't the best way to reconcile the young couple, however.

"I'd like you talk with you…uh….privately…if that's okay." said Zell, scratching the back of his head. He held out his arm. "Would you-"

"Yes!" said Ceres quickly, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her away. She glanced back at Quistis, who offered her a reassuring smile and a 'thumb's-up' signal. She liked Ceres…she sincerely hoped the two would work something out.

Quistis watched them go, and, smiling, walked back out onto the now empty balcony.

_Just for a moment. Then I'll go and schmooze all the politicians that Xu lines up in front of me._

The sounds of the party carried through the open doors and onto the balcony, a blend of music and voices sweeping across her ears. Waltz of the Moon. She had never liked that song. It inspired a kind of vapid wistfulness in her, that storybook romance kind of longing that she'd long abhorred and banished as a daydream of less logical women high on romance novels and low on common sense. She didn't want to feel wistful. She didn't want to feel anything. She leaned over the railing, letting the wind play with her hair.

_Alone again._ _Not so unlike another ball, years ago._

Esthar was a beautiful city, but she found herself looking forward to going home to Balamb. Home to the sea, to the grassy roads and to the place where Balamb Garden's polished metal structures would once again gleam in the sun at its base. Rebuilding Galbadia and Balamb Garden would take up at least a year, even with Esthar and Trabia personnel on loan.

It would certainly keep her mind occupied during the days ahead, anyway.

And she wasn't all alone, not really. For now, Cerberus' bulky form kept her warm at night, but even the dog's soothing presence could not chase away the nightmares. Nightmares of loss, of being blown apart, of watching others die.

She supposed that was the price of a soldier's life…the nightmares of the lost.

Dr. Kadowaki's offer had appeal. The idea of putting people together instead of ripping them apart had merit, and she found the idea of furthering Kadowaki's mag-infusion techniques fascinating. After all, it wasn't as if she'd be casting anything anytime soon…or ever again.

Pulling down her silk glove, she looked down at her wrist, at the jagged pink scar that snagged the length of her arm. The scar tissue buzzed from time to time, a faint tingle that Quistis chalked up to healing. And yet, without her magic, she felt slightly hollow, as if some smaller limb of hers was missing. But she was alive. She should have been happy…and she was. For Squall and Rinoa…for Zell, Irvine, Selphie, and Ceres…for all her living soldier brethren. For Xu and Serabin, who had never been busier. Edea had the new children to occupy her, and even she seemed happier now that the trial was over. She was even happy for the remaining children, the MagiTech, who were just beginning to smile again.

It was the looks in her friends' eyes that she couldn't take. Filled with concern, and sorrow…for her. For the one left alone.

She heard her name being called, and she turned to see Xu motioning her in. The young woman was standing next to a very rosy-cheeked Senator Perrins, pointing to the portly man and mouthing something that looked like 'schmooze."

Quistis waved her off, mouthing 'in a minute.' Turning, she leaned once more against the balcony, letting her eyes settle on the distant sunset.

She _would_ come in…

…_just a minute more._

*

…

…

…

"Get that gun out of the back of my skull before I break your arm off and beat you to death with it." Snarled Seifer, glaring at the guards behind him, one of which was escorting him rather roughly by his handcuffed wrists. The other had the barrel of a hand pistol shoved into the back of his head, while a third soldier lagged behind, carrying Helios in his arms.

It didn't make for a pleasant walk.

"Where the hell are you taking me, anyway?" he asked.

"Where _are_ we takin' him, Jamis?" said the other one under his breath.

"I don't know…to a holding cell, till I can figure out which number to call."

"Nice to know you two idiots have a plan," replied Seifer, wincing as the end of a rifle connected with the back of his skull.

"Did I ask you to speak?"

"Did I ask you to hit me in the back of the head?" snarled Seifer. "Fucking Hyne."

"Then shut up."

"Hyne, man, can someone else carry this sword? It weighs a ton."

"I'll carry it," offered Seifer helpfully, earning another rap on the skull.

Could he take the two guards? Yes…they seemed more inept than normal. But it probably wouldn't get him on good graces with Laguna Loire….whose party he was kind of crashing already.

"Lower your weapons, gentlemen," ordered a quiet, yet firm voice from behind the guards, who complied immediately. The voice sounded vaguely familiar...

"And give our guest his weapon back."

"Uh, sorry sir…we didn't know he was a guest of yours. He wasn't on the guest sheet…"

"Told you, morons," muttered Seifer, earning him another 'accidental' rap on the head before his wrists were loosened and Helios's heavy weight was once again back in his hand. For a moment, Seifer resisted the urge to use it on one or all of the guards. He glared at the three men, who took a step back. The moment passed.

Re-shouldering Helios, Seifer turned to see Kiros smiling back at him. "Mr. Almasy. I must admit...we were not expecting to see you here so soon. Still, you are most welcome. Come in, come in." With that, the tall, lanky man turned, inviting Seifer to follow behind him.

Seifer followed him up a winding staircase. "You said 'so soon'...you've actually been _expecting_ me?"

"Yes. Commander Leonhart received a telegram some months ago indicating that we might be expecting you. Xu, Squall, and Serabin have made arrangements accordingly."

Seifer raised an eyebrow. Chu? Probably. Meddlesome old codger.

With each step, Seifer would feel his stomach jumping higher into his throat. "Is…uh, Quistis here?"

"Yes, Miss Trepe is in attendance tonight." They reached a small elevator, and Kiros entered a code before the doors opened, allowing them inside. The elevator hummed as it rose. Reaching into his pocket, Kiros pulled out a small chip. "You might want to attach this to your neck."

Seifer looked down at the chip as Kiros deposited it in his palm. "And this is?"

"A cloaking chip, an experimental device used for reconnaissance missions. This one makes you look a little like-" Kiros paused. "Ardent Pitt, the famous actor, I believe."

"And you want me to wear this _why_?"

"There is a crowd of around three hundred upstairs," added Kiros. "I believe that to many, how shall I say this? Your presence might be a little…jarring?"

_Great._ _300 people. At this rate, it would take hours to find her, if he didn't get lost himself._

Seifer peeled off the tape on the back of the chip and stuck it to his neck. A small hum was heard, which he assumed meant the chip was doing its job.

"Ah. Much better." Kiros folded his arms and leaned back against the elevator. "I must admit, Seifer Almasy, I was surprised to hear of your deeds on Galbadia Garden."

"Yeah. So was I," muttered Seifer, watching the floors whir past them.

Kiros raised an eyebrow, smiling wisely. "We've arrived. I hope you find what you are looking for."

And with that, Laguna's body guard had disappeared into the crowd, leaving Seifer alone in a sea of silk and strings. Several stares instantly fixed upon him, filled with both surprise and disbelief. Even under disguise, he supposed he didn't exactly 'blend in'…with a long, leather trench coat and a rather large broadsword strung from his back, he didn't exactly make dress code.

Edging his way along the edge of the crowd, he searched for a familiar glance of…anything. A flash of blonde hair, the sound of her voice…

_What are you going to say to her?_

_I thought I'd just kind of…wing it._

_Wing it? Are you nuts?_

_Well, I didn't exactly have a lot of time to think up some shitty poetry while I was getting dragged up a flight of stairs… _

Seifer paused, only to realize that he was arguing with himself in his head.

_This is ridiculous._

_This whole thing is ridiculous._

_I'm not talking to you anymore._

_You're not talking to yourself anymore? Good one, idiot. _

He stopped then, his ears swimming with orchestra music and ringing with the sound of champagne glasses being clinked together. What the hell _was_ he doing here?

_Hey, Quistis, why don't you come and live in my hovel by the sea? No, I don't have a job, but we could eat clams and screw on the beach…_

He was seriously contemplating simply turning around and walking out the door when a voice behind him made him jump.

"Seifer Almasy."

Turning, Seifer found himself face to face with none other than Chick-Zell, dressed in a tuxedo and his mouth set in a grim, serious line.

"Chicken…Zell." He finished, nodding curtly. He had a dim recollection of Dinct up on Galbadia Garden, malice in his eyes as he glared down at him from the ceiling… "How the hell'd you recognize me?"

"Kiros told us you were here," replied Zell. "You might want to lose the sword, man."

Silence fell between them, and Seifer wondered if Zell was going to punch him. From the things he could remember doing to Zell, he definitely deserved it.

Expressionless, Zell raised his arm. For an instant, Seifer thought Zell really was going to punch him, and he found he no longer cared. Strange, but he no longer wanted to fight Dinct…he no longer wanted to fight any of them.

He braced himself for the hit-

…but then Zell's fist uncurled into an open hand. Zell looked straight into his eyes, his expression filled with neither friendship nor hate, only a frank, simple respect.

"Zell." Surprised, Seifer shook the young man's offered hand. "I…thanks."

Nodding, Zell released his hand, and retreated into the crowd. Seifer frowned.

_Well, that was weird._

"I didn't know they let old dogs into these things."

Now _that_ voice he'd know anywhere.

"Hyne. Does everyone know I'm here?" He turned, a ready smirk on his face. Would she shoot him here, or on the steps?

"Xu. Or should I say, Headmaster Chang?"

Xu's eyes narrowed as she, too, smirked back at him. "Almasy. I'm beginning to think you have nine lives. I thought you'd be worm food by now." She crossed her arms, looking him over. "I have to say, the disguise is an improvement. I can almost look at you without vomiting."

_Leave it to Xu not to change at all._

"Aren't you going to make good on your last promise?" he asked. At least he could be certain she didn't have a gun on her at the moment. He doubted even someone like Xu was bloodthirsty enough to bring a weapon to a party.

Xu smiled. "And get blood all over the buffet? Another time."

He looked her over, simply because he knew it infuriated her. "Awfully dressed up, aren't you, Xu? Aren't you worried people will start mistaking you for a woman?"

The new headmaster's lips twitched up in what might have been a smile. "You never change, do you?"

"Why change what works?" Seifer smiled back at her, surprised at how glad he was to see the ornery old bitch had made it out of the war alive. "Did you miss me?"

"Like the plague," she replied offhandedly, taking a sip of her champagne. "But for once, I'm glad you're here. I have a proposition for you."

"Xu, we've been over this." Said Seifer, trying to maintain a straight face. "I'm not going to sleep with you."

Xu looked for an instant as if she very much would have liked to have seen his brains splattered over the hors d'eavers. Instead, she sighed and took another (long) sip of champagne. "Are you familiar with the White SeeD?"

"Wasn't that a bunch of people who rode around in some ship-"

Xu rolled her eyes. "The White SeeD once protected Ellone, and yes, they traveled by water. After the war, Miss Ellone was sent into the protective custody of the Estharian government under Loire, and the White SeeD were no longer needed. The faction was dissolved, and the ship was docked in a private Balamb harbor. The White SeeD aren't an officially recognized sect anymore, by any Garden or any institution."

"Yeah, okay, and?"

"_And_, that's as I'd like to keep it. I want to reform it, _unofficially._"

"What?" he asked, scanning the crowds. She had to be here, somewhere. Xu wouldn't let her out of her overbearing sight for long…

"Thick doesn't suit you," replied Xu, rolling her eyes. "Pig-headed, stubborn, conceited, bull-brained, now _that_-"

"I get it," muttered Sefier.

"-but stupid, no. I want a force more subtle than SeeD. One I don't have to clear with the Garden Council. One that officially doesn't exist."

Seifer frowned at her. "Okay. I assume this history lesson is going somewhere."

Xu took another sip of her champagne and glared at him over the rim of the flute. "And I thought, who better to run an illegal faction than one who broke every rule in the SeeD handbook? Who better to hire than a man who officially doesn't exist to manage a faction that doesn't officially exist?"

"But why re-form the White SeeD? Once Garden is rebuilt, you'll have a whole new army of carbon-based robots at your disposal."

"Because I want a faction without the paperwork, without the politics, and without the restrictions. I want an institution without the bullshit. And, unfortunately, the only institution like that is one that doesn't exist. Get it?"

Seifer folded his arms, smirking. "Sounds almost like you're breaking a few of those golden rules in that book you sleep with every night. I'm surprised, Xu. Why the sudden change?"

Xu lifted a fresh flute of champagne off a passing tray. "Let's just say, in light of Cid's death, I'm inclined to play as dirty as the politicians." She downed the rest of the glass in one mechanical gulp, before handing it to a ready waiter who was staring at her in awe.

Seifer raised an eyebrow. "So you'd be my boss."

Xu shrugged. "Yes and no. You'll have your own ship, a small crew of highly qualified members gathered from the three Gardens, and _reasonable_ discretion to design and execute the operations I supply. You step out of line, of course, you'd have my boot up your ass-"

"Just like old times." Chuckled Seifer.

Xu was watching him, a carefully guarded look on her face.

"Thanks for the offer," he said, and meant it.

The Headmaster raised an eyebrow. "This isn't for you. This is just a way to ensure your death with less paperwork."

Seifer laughed. "I'll think about it. It all depends, I guess...on things."

_On _**her**_._

_Well, at least now I have a job offer, _**and** _a lean-to by the sea._

Xu folded her arms and gave him a scrutinizing glare. "Anyway, your reason for being here is somewhere around this political fray. And let me know about the position."

Seifer lifted an eyebrow, shocked. "Is that your version of a blessing?"

Xu pursed her lips. "No. That's my version of, 'you manage to fuck this up, and I've got my Razorback9 pistol in my sequined purse and you'll be able to suck what's left of your lower anatomy through a straw. Get going before I change my mind."

He met Xu's gaze then, looking levelly into her cold, killer's eyes, and was surprised to see the feelings that lurked there- possessiveness....loyalty…caring…and he wondered how he could have missed it.

"You too, huh?" he said, quietly, as realization dawned on him.

Xu gazed at him evenly, taking back nothing. "Always have," she said, simply.

"Then why-"

"You know why. I'll settle for heading a military institution and a trophy husband instead," she replied offhandedly. "Now go and talk to her, before I change my mind and shoot you in the groin for the sake of celebration."

Seifer shook his head, chuckling. "Aw Xu, don't act so sweet. People will think we're in love."

Xu started to reach into her purse.

"Going, going," he said, putting his hands up and backing away-

And running directly into Squall Leonhart, wearing a suit and an arm cast. He was beginning to feel stuck in a Garden gauntlet.

"So you're alive." Leave it to Squall not to mince words.

"Yeah."

"Where have you been?"

_Oh, you know, vacationing in Trabia….writing my book…looking at seaside villas…_

"In Trabia, mostly."

"Doing what?"

_Getting the shit kicked out of me by crazy old men._

"Recovering."

_Cheesy, but true._

Squall remained expressionless. If Commanding didn't work, he could always sideshow as a mime.

"And now?"

Seifer felt like he had been invited to a one-sided interrogation, minus the doughnuts, coffee, and burning heat lamp. "And now, what?"

"Where are you going, _now_?"

_Oh, I don't know…so many job offers…so many welcoming mats laid out…_Somewhere, the sarcastic voice had taken a back seat to reason, and he replied honestly instead.

"Don't know."

"Then why are you here?"

A twisted smile appeared on the ex-knight's face. "To see an old Instructor."

The commander's eyes betrayed nothing…they were as cold and hard as steel. And yet, Seifer had sensed that something intangible had changed between them, something unnamable and yet very real.

"You know, I wasn't any different than anyone else. I didn't think you'd changed. I didn't think you could. But…Quistis was right. We…I should have listened."

Seifer folded his arms, tension boiling in his spine. He hadn't come here for epiphanies and revelations.

"I'm…glad you're not dead." The commander paused. "When we were kids…you were kind of like…a brother, I guess."

_Brother._ The word that had stopped his sword on Galbadia.

_Not friends, not enemies, but brothers. _

_Yeah, he could live with that._

Seifer smirked, recovering from the revelation. "Yeah, a brother. I didn't like you much either, growing up. In fact, I still don't like you very much."

Squall smiled then, a rare sight. "Me either."

"Squall." In another time, the action would have broken him…or he would have broken under it. But, in a way Seifer couldn't explain, things were different now. He was different, and he didn't want to live with the past's shadows looming over him anymore…didn't want to spend his free time hating everyone and everything around him. More than anything, though, he didn't want to owe Squall Leonhart anything. "Thanks."

Squall looked surprised. "It's me that should be thanking you. Did Xu-"

"Yeah, she extended the offer. Said it'd create less paperwork if I died this way."

Squall shook his head, smiling. He didn't think he'd ever seen Leonhart smile before…then again, this was, after all, his first time storming the Estharian castle in the hopes of crashing a party.

First time for everything, then.

"Xu _would_ say that. If you need somewhere to go, Almasy…"

From across the room, Rinoa was waving at them both, smiling the brightest smile he'd ever seen on her before. Seifer nodded in her direction before turning back to Squall. "Yeah. Thanks."

Squall gave him a nod. Apparently as fed up with the emotional drivel as he was, the commander quickly turned and was swallowed quickly by the crowd. Seifer turned as well, and nearly ran into the person in front of him, one of the few people at the gala that was as tall as he was.

"Might I have a word with you?"

Green eyes, silver hair. Cultured accent. Seifer recognized the man immediately- after all, he'd just glared at his picture in the paper for the last hour.

"Serabin." He muttered, doing his best not to glare.

The young Headmaster was wearing a military jacket that fairly swam with medals. "I must admit, I'm surprised to see you here, Mr. Almasy."

"Not as surprised as I am," muttered Seifer.

"May I inquire as to where you've been all this time?"

"I spent some time in Trabia," replied Seifer nonchalantly. "Lovely weather there. Excellent Wendigo country."

_Perhaps not_ **all** _sarcastic bones in his body were broken_.

Serabin's smile was twisted. "I can imagine. Still, I'm glad you're here."

_You _**are**_?_

"I wanted to thank you for your help in G. Garden."

Seifer had wanted to hate him more than anything, but found that he couldn't. The man made it impossible.

_Fine._ _I hate him for making hating him impossible._

The truth was that Serabin was a decent man…a better man than he was.

_I hate him for being decent. _

_Hyne, I want to punch him in the face._

"I should be thanking you," replied Seifer begrudgingly.

The Galbadian Headmaster shrugged. "We'll call it even then. I must say, Almasy, you are quite a capable swordsman."

"Thanks. So are you." It wasn't flattery. Serabin really had taken him by surprise…the permanent scar on his side was evidence enough of that.

"Anyway, I wanted to tell you that, on account of your recently issued…death certificate…G. Garden will no longer be honoring the bounty on your head."

"I appreciate it." Replied Seifer.

_That was an understatement._

"At any rate," Serabin chuckled. "I believe the person you're looking for is on the balcony."

Seifer folded his arms, lifting an eyebrow. "Who am I looking for?"

The Galbadian Headmaster shook his head, chuckling ruefully. "Who else? Miss Trepe is a lovely young woman, don't you agree, Almasy?"

"What?" Seifer had just turned the corner in their last conversation and stumbled on the sudden change in topic, but it slowly registered. Seifer wanted to ask him who the fuck he thought he was. But then, he already knew. The man in front of him was the newly appointed Galbadian Headmaster. A decent man. An honorable man. The bastard who, in the picture, had his fingertips resting on Quistis' Trepe's bare back.

The man who had granted him his life. The man Quistis was smiling at in the picture.

He knew, in that instant, that this was a battle he couldn't win.

Serabin's eyes met his steadily, and he knew that Serabin was not afraid of him, and that Quistis' happiness was a rather large priority, judging by the seriousness of his tone.

"But I digress. I wish you the best of luck, Almasy. Perhaps, sometime, we can finish our duel," said Serabin, holding out his hand. "Agreed?"

Seifer shook the offered hand, still frowning. "Sure."

"If you'll excuse me," said Serabin, "I have a plane to catch. Then again, it _is_ my plane, so I suppose in theory they're required to wait for me." Smiling ruefully, Serabin disappeared into the crowd.

Seifer glanced around to make sure there were no others waiting in line to sabotage him, but the crowd now seemed more concerned with the champagne than with his presence.

_The balcony._ _She's on the balcony._

He could see light streaming in the large bay windows to the left, painting patterns on the white stone. Slowly, he walked towards it, as if afraid that on the edge of those doors marked the edge of a dream.

The first site of her nearly sent his heart through his chest. He had to stop for a moment, to rearrange his bearings, to narrow his eyes to make sure that the image in front of him was born of carbon and silk and not of fantasy.

She was standing with her back to him, leaning out on the marble banister with her arms draped across the smooth stone ledge. She wore a plain, strapless blue gown that bared the subtle flares of her shoulder blades and exposed the thick black band on her arm- a tag of mourning. Her hair was curled and pinned by an intricate silver concoction, whose thin metal curves bent behind her ears in spirals. Crystals dripped down from the headdress and onto her bare shoulders, catching the last rays of the sun.

She leant over the rail, staring down into the Estharian streets below, at the twisted green coils of shining metal sharp in the fading sunlight. The edges of the emerald city were still covered with tarp and stone rubble, still under construction. Sloping up from her blue silk gloves he could see the long, red lines embedded in her arms, the last marks of the poisoning. The scars that snaked up her arms were still prominent…they would probably never fade.

It was her. She was alive.

He caught his breath at the sight of her, joy running all through him and threatening to break every one of his veins wide open with the force of it. He wondered if she had always been that beautiful, or if the nearly ethereal glow about her had resulted from her resurrection in his mind's eye.

_Probably both._

He had to touch her…had to talk to her…had to see her turn around and look at him and know it wasn't all a dream.

He walked towards her, as if she were the sun and he a man starved for light. He stopped one step short of the entry doors, and could not walk a step further. It was as if there were an imaginary wall between them that he couldn't bring himself to cross just yet. He supposed he was afraid that he would cross the veil of a dream, and that she would shatter in front of him, like so many other dreams of her had before. Instead, he gazed at her from the doorway, standing on an oasis and praying to Hyne the figure in front of him was not a mirage.

His foot moved forward, stepping over the barrier. And she didn't disappear. She stayed.

He wanted to tell her that he had crossed hell for her. That he had journeyed through snow and wind and rain just to gaze on a stone that bore her name…to put flowers on that stone and tell the wind and the listening fields that he loved her, that he always would.

To speak her name one last time-

_Her name._

He wanted to say her name now, her _living_ name, the name that wasn't etched in stone but belonged to the breathing enigma in front of him.

_If he could only find his voice…if only he could think of what to say…_

"Hello, Instructor."

That same, ancient line, now tinged with such different meaning. Absently, he peeled the holo-chip off his neck and cast it aside. It was just the two of them out here, and he wanted her to see him, the real him, scars and sweat and a shitty haircut.

She stiffened, the muscles in her shoulders and arms snapping close to her body. "That isn't funny," she murmured, after a moment.

Her voice, her living voice…he took another step forward, onto the balcony, into a world with her in it.

…

…

…

_Hello, Instructor._

Her heart stopped beating in that precise moment, fingers curling tightly around the banister. She did not turn. In a moment, her heart resumed its beat.

_Ghosts._ _I'm hearing ghosts._ _Just don't turn around…it's another mirage caused by all the champagne, stirred up by the music….it'll only break your heart... _

"That's isn't funny." She muttered, her voice quiet, strained. "Bringing old ghosts…to a celebration."

_I just wanted to forget you for one night…just one…is that too much to ask?_

Her hands curled into fists on the banister.

"Don't you recognize your favorite student?"

Her shoulders tensed. "Stop it," she snapped, anger now creeping into her tone. She did not turn. The words tore themselves from her lips in harsh points, and her arms shook. Emotion burned in her, so brightly she thought she would burst from it.

"Quistis-" The voice now, earnest, almost pleading-

Something had snapped in her. Something old, and dark, and bitter…

She whirled, a blur of blue silk, her beautiful eyes widening, her breath tumbling out of her in a shuddering gasp-

Years later, in quieter and more peaceful settings, filled with friends and reminiscing, Seifer would not be able to tell of their reunion being at all akin to a fairy tale in any aspect. After all, theirs was not and had never been at all like a fairytale romance, the kind that fit neatly into glossed pages…the kind that was the stuff of 'ever-afters'. And, befitting their romance, she did not fall into his arms, sobbing, grasping what she had believed to be a ghost and pleading for him never to leave her again.

Instead, she nearly broke his nose.

It wasn't until he was sprawled out on his ass, blood gushing down his chin, that he realized she'd punched him in the face. In that moment, he realized several things:

1_._ _He was not Prince Charming._

_2._ _Well-guarded palaces were impossible to storm without getting bombarded by everyone __**in**__ them._

_3._ _Quistis Trepe was not a fair maiden- she was a trained mercenary in a pretty dress and she had a vicious right hook._

Gripping his nose, which was gushing like a broken pipe main, he glared up at her, her beautiful form blurred by the now searing pain in his face.

All the color had drained from her complexion, and her eyes were wide with shock. Her hand, still curled into a fist, was shaking. He was irresistibly reminded of another time, many years ago, when he had wound up on his ass with her leaning over him worriedly, her hand still curled into a tiny fist.

_Why the hell did you teach her to punch?_

He had to hold his breath, (partly from the pain), and because she hadn't changed a bit. She was whole, and alive, and pissed as hell at him. That knowledge lasted an entire minute before the pain in his nose once again seeped through to the surface of his consciousness, just as it seeped through his fingers.

"Hyde, woban!" he groaned, as blood began to ooze between his fingers. "I thig gu broge by fugging node!"

So much for words of endearment…

She was looking down at him, her eyes filling with tears.

_Now_, he thought, exasperated, _now she helps me up_.

"You son of a bitch!"

_Wrong again._

She descended upon him, fists raining against his shoulders and back. He feebly put up his hands to defend himself, but it was no use. The woman was furious, and she was _strong_. He was going to have bruises, he thought vaguely, as he stared up at her and thought about how beautiful she was when she was pissed…and how hard she could hit.

"You idiot!" she shouted, her voice shaking. "For months we thought…you let us…let us believe…your grave…" The force of her blows was diminishing, the tremor in her voice increasing. "I hate you…you're dead…you're **dead!**"

And suddenly, as she uttered the last word, she burst into tears, slumping to her knees as she pressed her hands to her face. Tentatively (he didn't want to get punched again), he put his arms around her, pulling her into his arms and trying to keep his head elevated to stop the bleeding.

He closed his eyes and he pressed her against him, real and solid and sobbing, still half-heartedly trying to hit him as he held her tighter…taking in the softness of her hair, the sound of her voice. After awhile, however, her resistance subsided, and she slumped against him, all her anger drained from her in favor of the tears that were now pouring down her face.

He found that his own eyes were wet, as well, and closed them, pressing his cheek against hers.

_You're alive. You're alive. You can hit me as much as you want, as long as it means you're alive._

He half expected to wake up in a snowdrift somewhere, shivering and delusional.

"Quistis."

He said her name, and for once, she didn't disappear. Instead, she sagged in his embrace, her wet, gleaming cheek pressed against his shoulder.

He didn't know how long they stayed there, but eventually his nose stopped bleeding and he could think clearly again. He inhaled the scent of her hair, her skin, clean and sweet and solid. Her skin beneath his fingers, soft… real. He knew it was real because her tears were wet and because his nose still hurt like hell.

It was the most wonderful feeling in the world, feeling her against him, even if she was bawling her heart out and his nose felt damned near broken.

Quistis, meanwhile, felt as if a dam had broke lose inside her.

_Watching a line of junior classmen fall under the rubble in a tank blast…_

_Sitting in Matron's kitchen, watching the woman sob over her bouquet of flowers…_

_The children by the water, their faces steel and flesh, eyes haunted and hopeful…_

_Cid's_ _ashes tumbling into the ocean, gone forever…_

_Seifer's grave, running her fingers over the cold stone …_

She clung to his jacket, shutting her eyes tight against the leather and breathing him in, breathing in the sound of his voice and the feel of his arms, trembling, around her…

After what seemed like an eternity, her sobs subsided and she heard him speak, a rumble that hummed against her cheek.

"I saw you die," he said. The words were choked, whispered, as if to say them too loud would make them real. "I thought…"

_There was an ocean…an ocean of voices that had gone on. Cid was there in the water…I think my mother was there, too. I wanted to go with Cid, but he made me go back…he made me promise… _

She closed her eyes against his neck.

"Come with me," he said suddenly.

"What? Now?" She opened her eyes.

"Yeah."

"Where?" she asked, after a moment.

Seifer rested his head on her chin as he gazed out at the Estharian sunset. "Just…come with me."

Her eyes were somber as she pulled back, a beautiful glacier blue that trapped the sunset, and the force of his feelings hit him like a fist to the stomach.

"All right," she replied, staring at the skyline, at the end of the day rising quickly in crimson, a blood-red heart that beat within a sea of clouds. An end. A beginning. She closed her eyes against the warmth of his neck and cried.

*

…

…

…

Darkness.

"Is this thing on?"

"Is the light on?"

"I think so…wait…"

"No, that's the battery light."

"Well, _I don't know, _I just replaced those today…here, hold it a second."

Suddenly, the dark picture jolted, and a pair of green eyes came into focus. "Voila! Perfect!" exclaimed Selphie, standing back and clapping her hands. She was surrounded by chandelier light, the golden rays illuminating her hair and the soft curves of her body beneath her bright emerald gown.

"Yeah…perfect." Irvine's tone was also appreciative.

She rolled her eyes. "Gimme that!" The camera's view swerved as it changed hands.

The camera view revealed an Estharian ballroom, filled with soft laughter, music, and the clink of champagne glasses. Large crowds stood, among them the new temporary heads of state for Galbadia's Government, jointly elected by Laguna Loire and the presidents of the other city governments.

A group of them was standing near the grand staircase, drinking champagne and chattering amicably. Xu was among them, wearing a simple, black dress decorated with a black and red sash (one of leadership, the other for mourning). The Headmaster smiled and waved the camera away, crossing her eyes in a rare, playful moment before taking a large swig of champagne and turning to Laguna Loire, who, by the looks of it, had had several glasses himself. Laguna noticed the camera also, and waved, his still handsome face knitting in a happy smile. An Estharian senator was off to the side with Kiros and Ward, who were all laughing at Laguna's rather tipsy state. The entire group noticed the camera, just then, and all five raised their champagne glasses in a careless, happy salute before turning back to their respective discussions.

"Honestly, Selphie, do you have to film _everything_?" Zell's face filled up the screen suddenly, sporting a handsome smile. His tie was draped carelessly around his neck, as were most of the other ties around the ballroom. Ceres, dressed in a long gold gown, rolled her eyes from her position at Zell's arm, giving a short wave before Zell whisked her, laughing, away to the dance floor. It seemed that the young couple, by all accounts, had made amends enough to dance, at least.

The camera angle grew closer, and revealed two figures off in the distance, leaning up against the refreshment table: Rinoa, laughing at something being said, and Squall, whose jacket was already unbuttoned and tie loose around his neck, his cast in a sling, smiling as well. Rinoa spotted the camera first, and waved enthusiastically. Squall rolled his eyes before reluctantly following suit.

Just then, a figure walked in front of the camera, jumping back as they caught site of it. The camera panned up to reveal Quistis Trepe, looking impatient. She rolled her eyes at the camera, giving the camera a brief bow before walking out towards the balcony and the fresh air, illuminated by the setting sun.

The picture fuzzed out for a moment, before coming to rest on a large, green eye. "…think the battery's dead. Wait, nope, there's the light!"

"Hyne-dang, Selphie, Zell threatened to throw that thing off th' banister if you filmed any more with it."

"Oh, he was just kidding, Irvy!"

"Y'know…I don't think he was…." Muttered Irvine, as he came into focus.

Suddenly, Zell ran, or rather, hobbled quickly into picture, out of breath. "Hey, Selphie, Rinoa's dog is a girl, right?"

"I think so…why?"

The martial arts experts scratched the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. "Well, I'm pretty sure Quistis' dog is a boy…"

"So?"

"So…uh….I don't think Cerberus is fixed…" Zell stared at the camera. "Selphie, turn that damned thing off! What'd I tell ya!"

"Hey guys!" Rinoa's voice off camera, bubbly from champagne. "I guess some guy from the Esthar Sun wants us together for another picture. By the way, have any of you seen Angelo? I can't find her anywhere."

Zell looked pale. Irvine was laughing.

"What's so funny?" Rinoa was frowning.

Zell muttered something about a bathroom and quickly hobbled away. Irvine was now doubled over.

Rinoa frowned after him. "I don't understand it. Angelo normally stays by my side…" the sorceress trailed off. "Where'd Squall go? And Quistis?"

"Hmmm…I don't know." The camera panned the length of the room, before coming to rest on the open balcony doors.

"Is that…" Selphie gasped, and a loud clang was heard as the camera clattered to the floor.

"Shit!"

"Yes!"

"Finally!"

"Irvy, Rinoa, quit cheering and help me pick up these pieces!"

The picture buzzed, but the floor view showed two people embracing on the hard marble, a picture of blue and white tangled up in each other.

There, in the last snippet of film on the now fading picture, was a knight and his queen under a Estharian sunset.

Maybe not a fairy tale…

…_but close enough._

…

…

…

a/n: probably there'll be two or more chapters after this. I split these other chapters up because 1) I've realized that most of these chapters are damned long, and I think this was the longest and 2) I thought the break in scenes was appropriate.

Leave a review, if you'd like! They're much appreciated!


	40. Ever After

Author's Notes: see bottom of page for full author's notes, as they are rather long. My beta thought that the last chapter was a sufficient ending, but I required more resolution (and more sap). And so, my readers and friends, I give you the ending. My original ending, which was much shorter, had the rest of the Liberi Fatali visiting Seifer and Quistis' graves at the seashore, waxing poetic. I hope you'll forgive me for a happy ending though, as, at the end of this period of year, I desperately needed one. Final author's notes will be at the absolute end of the story.

Final disclaimer: Nothing Squaresoft makes is mine. Although if they'd like to offer me a job, I certainly wouldn't turn them down! Anyway, I've had a fabulous time playing with Cerberus, Serabin, Brek, and 'Ceres', my take on the Library Girl (so I suppose she's not really mine). If anyone else wants to use them, they're welcome to! (Except for Brek, he's dead...best of luck using him.)

Recommended listening: Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve, Sympathy or Name by the Goo Goo Dolls, and, for the end of the chapter, I highly recommend _Blackbird_ as written by the Beatles and sung by Sarah McLaughlan, which is, I think, the most appropriate song I've picked out yet.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these broken wings and learn to fly  
All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to arise._…

Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see  
All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night  
Take these broken wings and learn to fly  
All your life  
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

-The Beatles

**Outside the Estharian Gates…**

Witherbrook Eden was just an hour outside of Esthar- by Chocobo, it took an hour and a half.

They rode most of it in a choppy silence that did little to ease the other's nerves.

After sitting out on the balcony for awhile, they had slipped out of the party, unnoticed save for a few baffled guards. Quistis had gotten over the sight of Glyph, she had reluctantly agreed to ride the chocobo, who seemed only too willing to assist her. After saying goodbye to Rajin, they left.

Quistis' tears, (something he had never seen before and hoped never to see again) had diminished eventually, only to leave her eyes and her tone hardened and dry. It seemed that having spent her grief and her surprise she was now left with anger, for one of several thousand reasons he could only guess at. He owed her about a hundred apologies, he supposed, but damned if he was going to apologize for something before he knew what it was. He was damned awful at apologizing, having not had much practice at it, and figured that apologizing for the wrong thing at the wrong time would be just as bad, if not worse, than waiting out her anger until he figured out what he was supposed to be sorry for.

Halfway through the journey, they switched positions so that Quistis was sitting on Glyph's back. He knew she was angry with him, but sitting behind her, with her settled between his thighs...even the legendary temper of Quistis Trepe couldn't keep his natural reaction at bay for long. Besides, he'd been holed up in a snow-covered cabin for nearly four months....he'd never claimed to be a saint. Thankfully, she didn't ask about the reason for a change in position, saving him the trouble of having to come up with an excuse.

So she rode behind him now, saving him from the scent of her perfume (and the view of her cleavage). Ahead of him or not, he was still haunted by the image of her in her beautiful dress, crystals dripping from her hair and her eyes as soft and blue as a summer sky.

Not having her wedged between his legs helped, though.

For awhile, in the spirit of her anger, she tried to ride without hanging onto him. Glyph's jarring movements soon made that difficult, however, and she was eventually forced to grab onto his sides, which sent a jolt though him. After all this time, her touch burned him, branded him- it scared him and yet, he couldn't stop wanting it. He'd expected to be greeted by her tombstone- to be greeted by Quistis herself, scarred and angry and sad, had been unexpected…exhilarating…terrifying…

He felt her angry glare burning into his back, and he knew he should say something...anything...but he'd always been notoriously (deliberately) bad with words.

_He wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful.  
He wanted to tell her that he was sorry.  
He wanted to tell her that he'd thought of their night together, thought of her, of a future with her in it, every day from the moment he'd woken up._

Instead, he glared ahead at the scenery, and chewed the inside of his cheek in frustration.

It was Quistis, predictably, who broke the silence.

"Why didn't you tell us?" she asked. "Why didn't you tell us you were alive?"

"Because I thought you were dead." he replied, honestly.

"You could have told Squall then, the others...." she continued.

"They don't exactly have telephones in Northern Trabia," replied Seifer, unable to curb the sarcasm in his voice. "And besides, I didn't think anyone was going to lose any sleep over me not showing up."

"Well, we all did." There's definite anger in her voice, rising with her tone. "Squall ordered the Trabian crash site searched. We made you a headstone, at the orphanage. We lit a candle for you at Cid's wake. We all thought…" she trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.

When he had made her cry, Seifer was certain that he couldn't feel any worse. Now, sitting here, feeling the slightest touch of the grief she must have felt, he was forced to re-evaluate his misery.

"Why did you come back, anyway?" she asked, and when he looked behind her, he saw that despite the hard set of her jaw, that there were tears in her eyes.

_I'm such an asshole.  
_  
Why **did** he come back? To ruin her life? To make peace with his ghosts? To try his hand at a normal life, even though in all probability he didn't deserve it?

"I wanted to put flowers on your grave," he said. It was the only thing that was completely true.

They didn't speak again for a long while.

"Where are we going?" Quistis again, though this time the steel in her voice had softened a fraction.

"Say goodbye to old ghosts, I guess," he replied, and was thankful that she didn't question him any further. Once again, they had settled into silence.

Having never really ridden a chocobo before, Seifer had discovered through sheer trial and error (mostly error) that steering one was rather like steering a finely tuned box car- it required leaning. That, and gently squeezing the appropriate side. Masa had apparently trained this thing more than he let on. Either that, or Glyph was smarter than he let on. Judging from the way Quistis gripped his sides, she had apparently never ridden a Chocobo either…not that he was complaining.

"How long till we're there?" she asked.

"I don't know. Another hour, maybe." Really, he wasn't sure. He had never made the journey by Chocobo before.

"An hour?!" she repeated disbelievingly. "Where are we going, exactly?"

"You'll see." She shifted behind him, and he could feel every curve of her pressed against him. He swore under his breath- apparently having her ride behind him wasn't going to win him any awards for Sainthood, either. Seifer wasn't sure how long he could make it on the Chocobo before things got really…uncomfortable.

_Odine_ _naked….Odine naked…_

Quistis shifted on the Chocobo's somewhat boney back. She could now see why most of the Chocobo riders of old wore saddles…the plumage didn't provide for much padding. She felt slightly ridiculous, riding a Chocobo for the first time and in evening wear, no less. The skirt was hiked above her knees, and her high heels were buried in the blue-tipped feathers of the chocobo's soft down. Seifer's coat, which he had long ago draped across her shoulders, smelled faintly like soap and soft leather, and the dark, earthy male scents that she had to admit were somehow irritatingly comforting. Although she had planned to sit away from him, the small space behind the bird's wings and the jostling movements caused by the bird's strong legs made it necessary for them to be smashed together and for her to lean onto him just to stay on.

They rode in silence for a time…the old walls seeming to rise up between him. He didn't know how much time passed- an hour, maybe two. It might as well have been an eternity. Their feelings, still unspoken, strained against the silence.

Seifer's boiled over first. "What about _him_?" he blurted.

"Who?'

"Serabin." He tried and failed keep the bitterness out of his voice.

A pause. "What does this have to do with him?"

"Aren't you screwing him?" he asked abruptly, then winced. He hadn't meant to phrase it like that, but…

"What?!" A new note in her voice- indignation.

"You heard me." Why couldn't he keep his mouth shut?

"What right do **you** have to ask **me** that question!" she shouted, causing his ears to start ringing.

"Just answer it! Are you screwing him, or not?" he replied obstinately.

"Screw **you**!" And just like that, she'd jumped off the moving bird, landing haphazardly on her heels and stumbling in the dirt.

"Where the hell are you going?" he shouted. "You're in the middle of nowhere!"

Her only response was a finger, stuck high in the air. Even after months of absence, quarreling, and even apparent death, it seemed they could still argue with the same vigor.

Swearing, he hopped off after her, only to land unceremoniously on his ass. Glyph, now riderless, turned around, cocking his head in puzzlement at the two humans on the ground.

"You're going the wrong fucking way, you know!" he shouted at her, scrambling to his feet and running after her.

She responded by throwing a shoe at him. He ducked, and continued after her, lengthening his strides.

"Get away from me!" she shouted, now hobbling away from him on one foot and brandishing her other shoe like a weapon. The situation would have been laughable, had she not looked like she actually wanted to kill him with it.

He rushed her before she could brain him with the other high-heeled nightmare, knocking them both to the ground. She punched at him, but was smart enough to know that he had the weight advantage, and quickly gave up. He held her down by the arms, relying on the rest of his body weight to pin her down.

"What the hell do you care about who I sleep with! You made it abundantly clear that what happened between us was a mistake! And now you come back…and what? What do you want **now**? You want to make me feel as bad as you do?"

They were both breathing hard- her hair was a mess and she was glaring at him with every inch of her old fire. It was preferable to the sub-zero look in her eyes, he supposed.

"Is it so hard for you to believe that someone else might care about me, instead of running away ?"

And yet, she knew that he had stayed…carried her back and stayed at her side. As it was, she wasn't feeling very fair or charitable at the moment.

She looked away suddenly, fury melting from her face. "He offered me a job in Galbadia. Commander, second in command. It was an excellent offer…he was always kind, and considerate…and-"

There was something missing in her gaze. "And you said no," he finished for her, staring down at her.

"I said no." she replied dully, looking away.

It didn't matter what had happened with Glyphias in the past. It was over.

With the happiness that rushed him, however, there came a sense of overwhelming guilt.

She turned down Glyphias and a life of luxury…a life she deserved…and he was happy about it.

_I am the world's biggest asshole._

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, and meant it. He helped her to her feet- she brushed half-heartedly at the dirt on her gown and wouldn't meet his eyes.

_Even if she hates me…I want to show her this one last thing…I don't want to do it alone._

"Just…come with me," he said quietly. "Come with me, now, and I won't ever ask anything of you again. Shit, I know I don't deserve to, but…"

"WARK!" Glyph had stopped a few feet away from them and was looking at them both as if they were crazy. Impatiently, the chocobo stamped his foot, sending a cloud of dust flying.

He turned back to Quistis. She nodded slowly, then looked away. He handed her the other shoe, and she accepted it.

"I think you broke my nose." He muttered.

She rolled her eyes. "I did not."

_And anyway_, she thought privately, _you broke my heart. _

Uncomfortable silence descended again.

After what seemed a minor eternity, he spoke up, measuring his words carefully this time.

"I really did think you were dead, you know."

"That makes two of us." She replied coolly. A pause. "Where have you been all this time?" She asked as if she were afraid of the answer. Given his history, he didn't blame her.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." He replied, shaking his head. "I barely believe it myself." He muttered.

Her tone was cynical. "Try me."

He wanted to tell her that he had been buried in the snow…clawing to the surface, trying to become the man he thought she would have wanted. But he couldn't. He didn't know if he would ever be able to.

And so he told her about Chu and the 'borrowed' cabin in the woods. He told her about Masa, and the two swords in the stream. He told her about Glyph, and about Helios…about his mother's ring and about killing the Ruby Dragon. He told her about seeing Rajin again. He found himself smiling in some parts, frowning in others, and during the fight with the dragon, gesturing like a madman. He was surprised to find that the words came effortlessly, but then, it had always been easier to talk to her.

She listened intently, and a few times, when she laughed, his heart hammered in his throat.

"So this coat…is actually part of the dragon?"

"Yeah, part of Chu's policy, apparently." He replied. "You kill it, you wear it."

He could hear her smile in her voice. "It's an improvement."

When she didn't speak for a while, he glanced over his shoulder at her to see her studying him intently, an unreadable expression on her face.

"What do you want from me, Seifer?" she asked, suspicion heavy in her gaze.

"I just want…I want you to be happy." He said, honestly.

She looked as if she didn't believe him. He didn't blame her.

"You're not going to tell me where we're going, are you?" she asked again, after a time.

"You'll see."

"You know, Seifer, I don't particularly like surprises."

"I've noticed," he replied, rubbing at his nose.

She glared back at him, but said nothing. Instead, she stared out at the landscape, and he was given the opportunity to study her profile.

He could see their destination coming into view, slowly but surely. Glyph didn't even seem winded, but he knew they'd journeyed a long way by the sheen of damp sweat that was now glistening on the Chocobo's feathers.

Witherbrook Eden was a small town, a patchwork of corn fields and rotting shingleboard that depended on Estharian industry for its small, struggling economy. Dirt roads circled around abandoned railroad tracks in a kind of desperate, hopeless loop. Faded shop signs swung in the wind, an empty echo. Seifer was convinced that some drunk poet had named the town to make it sound majestic, to cover up the taint of desperation that a person got on their skin when passing through the city limits.

The natives gazed at passing cars with the kind of lackluster bitterness of shipwrecked sailors. They regarded the blue Chocobo with dumbfounded stares.

Seifer knew this place. It was a shadow in his heart, a lurking dark that followed in every step he took.

It was exactly the same as he'd remembered it.

It was a place where ambition came to rot, where people buried their dreams in their gardens and their bottles of bourbon. His mother, in an attempt to ward off the bitter taint of poverty, had filled a garden with flowers, trying desperately to grow hope from dead soil. When she had died, his father had filled his liver full of cheap whiskey, trying desperately to bury her in his heart the same way he'd buried her in a pine box. When his mother had died, his father's hope had died with her. Without his mother to protect him, Seifer had fallen victim to the angry and desperate man his father had always been, deep down, and if he had learned to hate his father, then he had also learned to mimic him.

Both their worlds had died with her that day.

Witherbrook Eden's cemetery was a mass of tall grass and overgrown willows. The caps of tombstones peeked out somewhere in between; small, chipped, rounded stones poking just above the weeds. If there had ever been a caretaker, the man had given up long ago. Then again, he had been gone for nearly eighteen years…things tended to fall to disorder in nearly two decades, he supposed, especially in a place like this.

Seifer slid off the chocobo's side, stumbling before he righted himself. He turned to help Quistis down, but, as if on cue, Glyph sunk to his knees, allowing Quistis to slip neatly off his side.

He was really beginning to hate that bird.

Seifer walked quietly through the maze of stone, looking for a particular tree, one etched in his memory. In the back, in front of a sagging willow lay one particular stone, worn from weather and age. He couldn't forget it, no matter how hard his mind tried to weave tales around it…to create stories where that very stone never existed.

Quistis followed him wordlessly.

"I lied to you." He said quietly.

She looked at him, questioning.

"When you asked if I remembered my mother, and I said no, I lied." He glared down at the stone.

Silently, he knelt by the grave marker, tracing his fingertips across the fading inscriptions. Somewhere beneath the earth lay a whisper of a life, a rotten pine box and the salt, dirt, and ash of a dream that he carried around in a corner of his heart.

"She died when I was a kid, and my old man died right after her." Truthfully, he wasn't sure where his father's grave was, and it wasn't as if it mattered, anyway. Probably in a pauper's grave somewhere, an unmarked stone hidden in the grass. He had no memories of his father he cared to revisit, anyway.

**Aya** **Janis Almasy- Beloved Wife and Mother**

_Mom_. He wanted to tell her about the ring…about Masa and Chu and the sword. He wanted to tell her about Adel, and Edea…he wanted to tell her about Quistis.

The ring.

"_Hey, little man. This is a special gift for you, but you can't play with it like your other toys, all right? You have to keep this in a special place, so you don't lose it. You have to keep it for me."_

"_Why don't you keep it, momma?"_

"_Because._ _Someday you'll meet a pretty girl, and she'll make you want to spend a long, long time with her."_

…"_So, when that happens, you give her this…you give her this, and you think about me and remember how proud I am of you."_

**Would you be proud of me, mom?** **Or would you understand?**

When he came back to reality, he found that Quistis was kneeling by his side, her eyes skimming the stones. She looked sad, and a little wistful, as if she were occupied by shadows of other lives passing over her memory as well. She straightened, suddenly, sighing and staring out at the horizon.

His mother would have liked her…he was sure of that much.

"We'll walk the rest of the way on foot," he said gruffly, walking past her. She followed him, and Glyph trailed behind, occasionally scanning the landscape for any stray lunch items scurrying about.

"What are you going to do, now?" she asked him.

"I'm not sure." He said truthfully.

_There's the whole fact that I officially don't exist anymore…that's going to make it difficult to get a job…_

"What about you?"

She shrugged. "Kadowaki's offered me an apprenticeship. I might take it."

He sighed. "I guess…I'm just wondering what I'm supposed to do. What I'm entitled to do…after…everything…"

She gazed at him, thoughtful. "You tried to destroy the world once…and you tried to save it, once. I'd say that makes you both a little better and a little worse than everyone else. Offhand, once you average it out…I'd say that makes you the same as everybody else...entitled to live."

She had just given him the single greatest liberty he could have hoped for- not absolution, and not gratitude, but…a kind of sovereignty that he had not dared to consider himself. They walked in silence again, but this one was less forced. Her curls were slipping into her normal straight, silky locks, and she'd taken off her shoes, walking barefoot down the dirt road with her dress gathered up in her fist.

"You really do look….nice." Considering when he last left her, she was torn open on a battlefield…but she would have been beautiful anyway. Still, he hadn't meant to say that out loud. Why couldn't he keep his mouth shut around her?

"It's only a facade." She returned hollowly, refusing to meet his eyes as she walked ahead of him.

"Well, you wear it well enough." It came out harsher than he meant it to.

She narrowed her eyes and her gaze sunk heavily, sharply, into his as she turned around. "Lies are normally your specialty, not mine."

Nice to know they could still cut each other so cleanly.

She turned away, a fierce, glittering look in her eyes. "Because of Esthar…I can't cast anymore. I can't ever have children. All this-" She gestured to her gown. "Doesn't mean anything. I'm useless, now."

The emptiness in her tone made his own chest ache.

"You were always your biggest enemy," he said, suddenly angry at her defeated tone. "I always thought it was a shame…that you wasted yourself on people and causes that were beneath you. That was always the thing that pissed me off about you, you know- that you used yourself up before anyone else had the chance."

And then she really did turn around, a feral look on her face. The wind took up a corner of her dress, flaring the blue lip up against the breeze. "What the hell did you come back for?"

He folded his arms. "You know that."

Strands of hair were loose in her face- they whipped in her eyes now, caught by the wind. "Do I?" She looked almost ready to cry. "What do you want from **me**, Seifer?"

"I have to do this last thing…just…I guess I didn't want to do it alone." He felt open and vulnerable, standing there in front of her. It was a hell of a miserable feeling.

Her eyes were wary, and she remained standing still. "Why **me**?"

He looked right back at her, stopping. "Don't you know?"

_Don't make me say it now…._

"No, I don't. I don't know anything about you. I don't think I ever did."

He took a step forward, and she took one back.

"You know everything about me." His eyes never left hers as he took another step forward. "Everything that matters."

Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

One step lay between them, yet, but it seemed like a mile. He offered her his hand. "Just…come with me."

She was studying him, the look on her face one of scrutiny, but not hatred. He measured the look she gave him now against the one she had given him when he first returned to Garden. It was an improvement.

After a minute, she took his hand, and he led her down to the end of one nondescript dirt road. Something dark and cold dropped into the pit of his stomach as they drew closer to it, but he forced himself forward. He wanted to face it. He wanted to get it over with.

"This was my house." He said hollowly, looking past her, dropping her hand.

Throughout the years, the small house had rotted and sunk slightly into the earth, the windows split and clumps of vines and moss clinging to the decaying sides. It looked like a rotting brick carcass sunk in the tall yellow grass that had overtaken the lawn. Back behind the house, tall, scraggly stalks of corn sprawled across the landscape. In the front yard, a rusted metal mailbox had tipped over. The letters and flowers that had been hand-painted on it had faded almost to obscurity, but were faintly visible.

**..lm-s-y…**

There was no need to open the front door- it had been jarred open long ago by looters or squatters and now hung on a single hinge that creaked rhythmically in the breeze. He walked through, and she followed silently after him.

The living room looked like the aftermath of a cyclone. A chair had been sliced to ribbons, the stuffing scattered around the room. An old TV was also broken, the glass glittering in the shadows. Cream-colored curtains clung to the windows in mildewed shreds.

_His father sprawled out in the recliner, surrounded by green glass bottles, the TV painting shadows on his unshaven face…_

She took his hand again as they walked through the shadowed entryway, a frown etched on her features. The contact jolted him, unexpected, and he realized the look he must have had on his own face. He didn't glance over, but he did grip her hand in return.

She walked into the small bedroom, but Seifer hung back, a haunted look in his eyes. "My mom…died in this room."

He led her next into a small, cramped space. The paint was peeling off the walls, here, and the rodents had long ago spilled the stuffing of the mattress all across the floor. Bits of glass and floorboard lay scattered around, and curtains hung in tatters. There were more faded photographs, but these were stained dark, obscured by old, dried blood.

"This was my old room." He said quietly, his voice low and strange, then promptly turned and walked out.

She knelt down, picking up a faded, torn photograph from the floor. Carefully, she edged the halves together. It was of a little boy, knee deep in a garden, smiling boldly, bravely, as he held up a worm. A beautiful woman crouched next to him, gardening gloves gripping fists of weeds and cheeks smudged with dirt as she smiled proudly at her little boy. Both mother and son sported a patch of summer freckles.

Her heart nearly broke then. This is how it should have been for him…

The kitchen was small, and not much to look at, old, rotting wood cupboards spilled open to reveal the skeleton sacks of wheat and rice, long ago plundered by opportunists both two and four-legged. A pantry door sat off to the side, unhinged, and stacked up against an opposite wall. A kitchen table sat on three legs, and a chair lay sprawled beneath it. Dark stains had seeped into the linoleum.

She could see the kitchen clean, and sparkling- Seifer's mother baking cookies in the oven, the three of them sitting down to dinner at the card table with its cheap blue linen, poor but happy-

…the way it should have been…

She walked through the house alone, feeling the weighted presence of old ghosts on her skin. She understood about shadows…about the phantom thoughts and whispers that one clung to simply because it was impossible to let go. Old scars…took up residence in you, and if you let them grow…

Then they became you.

A chair in the living room had been ripped almost to shreds, the open filets the result of a sword or some other dulled metal. Dark stains here, too, pooled on the wood floor in almost black, dried puddles. She frowned. So much blood in one house…

A television lay on its side, shattered, the pieces sprawled out across the dirty carpet. Vines had overgrown what remained of the windowpanes, only allowing small slivers of sunlight to leak through.

For a second, she could almost see a pale-haired boy out in the yard, sprawled out on the grass and gazing at the sky with a young woman, pointing at the clouds, but the image vanished just as quickly. She shivered, then immediately felt silly. There were no monsters in these shadows, only memories, memories that had shaped the man that stood in the yard now, gazing up at the sky as if it would fall on him at any moment.

_But why show her all this? Why now?_

She dropped her shoes in the doorway and walked out onto the grass, shielding her eyes from the sun as she tried to find what he was gazing at. He didn't turn, but she knew he felt her presence, because his demeanor changed, relaxed, as soon as she reached his side. "Thank you for bringing me here," she began. "For trusting me enough to-"

"I wanted you to know." The words burned as he said them, tearing a hole in his chest and leaving him wide open. He hated this feeling, this vulnerability, but he knew that if he never told her, he'd hate himself more. As it was, he was still feeling pretty shitty.

She stared at him.

He glared at the sky, balling his hands at his sides. "I know I don't deserve to ask you anything, to bring you here, to say anything to you, but-"

"My mom was the one good thing in our world…and when she died, my dad…sort of rotted with her. Maybe, if things turned out different, I could've been different, but…my dad was a piss poor example, and I've always been so angry. I don't think I ever stopped being angry at her for leaving, or at him, for not being strong enough to take it. I've always been so fucking pissed, because it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, it all just got worse…I wasn't strong enough to stop any of it, and I hated everyone else because of it. I wanted to be good….I wanted to be better than this, than him, than this place. But I was worse than he ever was."

She shook her head, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You are a good man, Seifer-"

He tensed, then shook his head. "Who I was, then…I was just a dumb kid. But I'd like to be like that again…like I was...before. I was better then, you know? Not…fucked up. And when I got back to Garden, when you said that you believed in me…" He rubbed at the back of his head. "No one ever said shit like that to me before. I hated you for that. But when I was in Trabia, stuck in the snow, all I could think about was you. How I wanted to have deserved what you said."

The words were tumbling out now, and he felt like he was stumbling down a mountain, the feelings rushing out of him with every breath…

"I know I've got no right to ask you to…but… someday…I bought this house by the ocean, it's a shithole, the door fell off and the plumbing…and…_shit_…I'm sorry, I'm no fucking good at this…I promised myself I wasn't going to say this to you…that I'd let you be happy-"

A subtle smiling had been growing in the corners of Quistis' mouth as she watched him struggle. Now, observing the miserable look on his face, she sighed, and decided to take pity on him.

She stopped his miserable babbling by turning his head and pressing her lips to his.

His eyes opened wide at the contact, and he hesitated for a moment. But then the shock faded, and he wanted to laugh. He wanted to run around like a maniac and shout at the sky. Hell, he felt like he could even conquer the world without fucking it up…

_Nah._ _Once was enough._

All too soon, she pulled back, her hands gripping the lapels of his coat. She was smiling, really smiling, for the first time in…hell, had he really seen her smile like that before?

"Just…wait for me…" he whispered. "Someday...I'll try…and-"

Someday I'll be the man you deserve…

**Someday**…

"No." she said solemnly, staring ahead at the ruined shack in front of him. He turned to her, heart on the verge of shattering, and saw her smile, softly.

_You and I…we're not perfect. We're damaged, and we're scarred, and we're tired old killers that never had a home. We'll never be perfect. But maybe we don't want to be. Maybe, if we're together…maybe that can be enough._

She had a strange look in her eyes. "I don't want tomorrow." She leveled her gaze at him, tears brimming in her eyes. "I just want today. I want…whatever it is we have, for as long as we can have it."

He looked away. "I can't give you a fairy tale."

She laughed. "I wouldn't know what to do with one. You've never been a hero and…." She smiled, and shook her head, "And me, well, I'll never be a princess. And…I think I can live with that. I think I like it better that way."

He straightened a little, his spine for the first time extending to its full, proud length as something inside him finally shattered, some dark and acidic shame lifting from his veins at her words. She loved him. Why, he'd never know. But hell, she loved him, and he wasn't going to walk away from it twice.

She was an angel, a stubborn avatar that clung to him, believing in him. Maybe, in her eyes, he could be the man he'd always wanted…he could believe her.

Someday….

**Now**…

He dropped his head and gave her a proper kiss. Her lips felt like holy water poured over his skin, soft and clean and cleansing. Her hands rose to frame his face, soft and delicate, sweet like angel wings, and he gave himself over, let himself believe…in the future and in her…in all the things that he had never dared to dream, but now seemed possible somehow. When he realized he was trying to justify throwing her down into the grass, he withdrew a little, trying to catch his breath.

Breaking apart, they gazed at the house together, her head on his shoulder and his heart beating wildly in her ears. "Let it go…" She whispered. "It's over, now."

Perhaps she was speaking as much about her past as his.

He squinted at the ruins, waiting for them to become something long past…something whole and completed and done with. But the shack would not rebuild itself…the house had never been complete in any sense.

And now?

There was nothing left…nothing but bitterness lurking in the rotting boards…nothing but a failed dream. He wanted to remember the promise…not the end.

He kissed her again, and felt it. Strength. Resolve. He could do it now.

He deepened the kiss, reaching down to intertwine their fingers as he raised their hands, Firia burning in his fist like a thundering heartbeat. It released in a roaring hiss of energy, flames embracing the tiny shack that had been the beginning of his ruin, and would now be the end of it.

_Let it go…_

Quistis broke the kiss to stare at the flaming skeleton of a house, hair whipping against her face as she leaned her forehead against the line of his jaw, her skin warm against his. They watched, quietly, as the haunted shack burned away, releasing all its pain and torment into the sky in the ghost-like embers that sparkled like rubies in the sapphire sky. Seifer closed his eyes, hands trembling around her as the memories tumbled down the hallway of his mind, drowning him-

_He saw his mother, her blonde hair swept up from her face, laughing…_

_His father, standing in the rows of corn, a scythe in his hand, not crippled, but smiling- …C'mere, boy._ _Let's go find your mama, huh?_

_His mother in the garden, smiling, arms open to welcome him in- ….Hey, little man. Want to help me pick some flowers for the table?_

_Adel, her smile glittering._ "_Visne saltare, Seifer?"_

_Edea's_ _eyes, lit with madness, her smile drawing him in…"Take my hand, Seifer. Follow me to a place of no return…"_

_His mother, her eyes closed, face still and peaceful against the pillows, heart stopped forever…._

_His father's wrist, dangling from the old recliner, a sea of blood trickling down a lifeless palm, bottles scattered like green glass skeletons at his feet…_

_You ain't never gonna be nothin' boy…_

_The old shadows…the old pain…but happiness there too, if he wanted it…_

_Running through the fields, the sunlight on his face, reaching out to the apparition in front of him, reaching out his hand to snatch the thread of laughter and golden silk-_

_He could remember now. The orphanage, chasing Quistis through the tall grass-_

A warmth encompassed his hand, and he looked down to see her fingers still threaded through his, eyes fixed on the blaze as she gave him a small squeeze.

**Quistis**.

The light at the end of the path…the golden light he'd dreamed.

She was smiling.

**I believe in you. I have always believed in you.**

A breath he wasn't aware he was holding for the past sixteen years flew up into the air, gone forever, his chest burning as he clenched his jaw and forced himself to watch the past fade away in great, gulping flames.

He'd returned here this last time, because this place was a part of him, and perhaps it always would be- a lingering shadow behind his lids. But he'd never return here again. This part of his life was over. Hope was thrumming through him, pure and bright, thoughts of a house by the sand and a pretty girl to share the sea with. Not a fairy tale….

…_but close enough._

He watched the last of the roof fall in a tumble of burning cinders, the door falling in a violent tumble as the last of the house faded, spiraling up in a million crimson embers towards the cloudless sky. Something in him was broken and breaking free, spiraling up, up into nothing, and the pain brought tears to his eyes even as it rose up from the endless fields, into the sun.

It was over.

It was just beginning.

He squeezed her hand, and swung it a little, willing her to follow his gaze away from the blazing ruins. He fumbled in his pocket…felt the metal circlet and knew that he wanted to give it to her, but not today, not in the ruins of his past. Someday, though. Someday soon.

He heard a distant flapping, and reluctantly broke the embrace to stare out into the open field behind the burning house. For a moment, he thought he saw the shadow of a boy lurking in the fields, his head turned up towards the sky. Just as suddenly, however, the shadow of a little boy dissipated, slunk into the shadows and burned away in the flames. Gone, but not forgotten.

A flock of crows, disturbed by the heat and the roar of the fire, rose up into the sky. The spiraled up into the blue- seeds rising in the wind. Towards the light.

He felt laughter bubble in his chest, tumbling out and rising up as he tilted his head back to watch the birds fly, laughter catching on their wings and soaring up to the clouds…up into forever.

For the first time, his heart soared with them.

*

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**BALAMB'S HEROES PRESENT AT RIBBON CUTTING CEREMONY, BALAMB AND GALBADIA** **GARDEN** **TO REBUILD**

_**Esthar**__._ _President Laguna Loire, son Squall Leonhart, and Sorceress Heartilly, were among those celebrities present at Esthar's opening ceremonies to commence the renovation of war-torn Esthar post Third Sorceress War. Quistis Trepe, high ranking SeeD and hero of both the Second and Third Sorceress Wars was also there to receive a medal of valor from President Laguna for her bravery in battle at what many are calling, "The Second Siege of Esthar." The young SeeD was noticeably improved from her former condition, and was seen making jokes with the normally stoic Commander Leonhart over champagne at the reception, as well as another soldier whose name is undisclosed. The three, in addition to Sorceress Heartily, were inseparable for the duration of the evening. _

_Laguna Loire was in high spirits as both he and newly appointed Balamb Headmaster Xu Lee cut the ribbons to the city gates. "We have Balamb_ _Garden_ _to thank," said Loire, setting down the ceremonial scissors. "I couldn't be more proud of the heroes here today. Now that Balamb's name is cleared, the city of Esthar_ _hopes that the Tri-Garden alliance will be renewed quickly and without incident. Let us hope that these young men and women can enjoy the peace that they have fought so hard to attain."_

_Newly appointed Galbadian Headmaster Serabin Glyphias echoed these statements, along with also newly appointed Headmaster Lee. Said Xu, "We believe that the greatest stability does not lie in competing factions, as it has been in previous years, but in a unified taskforce. It is our hope to form a tri-alliance, whose strategy is complete global cooperation to ensure the best military protection for all civilians. That has always been the goal of Garden, and the dream of Balamb's former Headmaster, Cid Kramer. He will be missed, but his dream will be fulfilled." Edea Kramer was unavailable for comment. Serabin Glyphias echoed his hopes for a renewed and renovated Tri-Garden Alliance. "Once rebuilt, the Gardens can continue to serve and protect those in need, as was their original, present, and future designation. In an ideal world, independent military institutions like Garden would be used as peacekeepers. That is my hope for the future of our great institutions. "_

_When asked about her plans for SeeD, Xu had a statement already prepared. SeeD was long ago established by Cid and Edea Kramer to quell the rising threat of the Sorceress entity, should it arise. Now that the possession has travelled to Miss Heartilly, Xu was asked (as Mr. Kramer was asked) if Garden had a conflict of interest. "I find that offensive. There is no conflict of interest. After the Second Sorceress War, Balamb representatives met with Miss Heartilly and Commander Leonhart to discuss SeeD's future. It was Miss Heartilly herself who suggested SeeD remain intact, due to the unknown nature of the future and her hopes for continued peace and stability. In this time of peace, SeeD will be dispatched to other missions, but will be ready to serve their initial purpose should those unfortunate circumstance arise." Commander Leonhart had no comment._

_In similar news, Seifer Almasy, 23, who, years back, was wanted for war crimes related to his relationship with the Sorceress Edea, was given a full post-humus pardon by the Garden Board and was awarded top SeeD status for his actions during what officials are now calling the Third Sorceress War. Almasy is said to have delivered the final blow to Neo-Sorceress Adel, thus ending the reign of terror that nearly destroyed three Gardens and one booming city. Headmaster Xu Lee Chang expressed her own personal desire that the ex-knight rest in peace, and that the rumors of his ghosts would eventually fade into nothing but a fitting remembrance for the rogue soldier turned hero._

_Headmaster Chang also commented that many new positions will be filled by those vacated during the war, and new positions created due to new circumstances. Ceres Morlisius, Balamb's former Head of TechServices, has been most recently been upgraded to Technology Advisor for the Tri-Garden alliance- a position, she says, she hopes to use to refine and sharpen the technology between Gardens to avoid future occurrences like the IGCS disaster._

_Quistis Trepe, now a war hero from both the Second and Third Sorceress wars, when asked for comment, simply expressed her happiness that Balamb_ _Garden_ _would soon be operational. Miss Trepe was given the key to Esthar after her actions proved to be the turning point in Esthar's recent siege. "It is with great tribute to Cid Kramer that Balamb_ _Garden_ _once again opens its gates. It is my hope that after the Garden Committee is cleaned of the political refuse that in past years has harbored its corrupt policy-making, that the Tri-Garden Alliance can fulfill Mr. Kramer's dream- that with such a system in place, no further military force shall ever be required." When asked about her recently offered position in the recently vacant presidential slot for the Galbadian Government, she said she had declined the position. "For now, I am needed here, at Garden. Besides," she added, laughing, "I'm not really much of a politician."_

_When asked to comment on the ring on her finger, Miss Trepe smiled replied with no comment. Rumor Mill has it that Miss Trepe may be off Balamb's Most Eligible Bachelorette List, however._

_In other news, BioTech is suing the Balamb Scouts of Timber for failure to deliver over two thousand gil worth of Cactuar Truffles, Mint Moombas, and…_

*

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	41. Ends and Beginnings

Recommended listening: Somewhere Over the Rainbow as sung by Israel Kamakawiwo, or Spin by Lifehouse. Both good songs, both appropriate for the last chapter. See the end of this chapter for the Author's notes and thanks, which are quite lengthy. And, if you've made it this far with me, whether for the first time, or the third, I thank you so much for coming this far. I hope you've enjoyed what you've read and please, feel free (and encouraged) to leave a review!

I'd rather chase your shadow all my life

than be afraid of my own

I'd rather be with you

I'd rather not know

where I'll be than be alone and convinced that I know

and the world keeps spinning round

my world's upside down and I wouldn't change a thing

I've got nothing else to lose I lost it all when I found you

and I wouldn't change thing

no you and I wouldn't change a thing

Everything I know has let me down

so I will just let go let you turn me inside out

cause I know I'm not sure about anything

but you wouldn't have it any other way

spinning, turning, watching, burning all my life has found its meaning

walking, crawling, climbing, falling all my life has found its meaning

you and I wouldn't change a thing

no you and I wouldn't change a thing

-Lifehouse, Spin

Chapter 41: Ends and Beginnings

_Darkness_.

"Hey, how does this damn thing turn on?"

The record light flickered on a black screen, the scene just a little fuzzy before the picture came in. Suddenly, the picture rattled completely, tumbling down to provide an excellent view of the ground before the picture once again fuzzed out.

"Oh, shit!" came the audio. An innocent whistle followed. "Whew. No harm done."

"I saw that, Zell Dinct!" came a voice off screen, sounding remarkably like Selphie's.

"Oh, shit." Came the mutter. And then, louder, "Saw what, Selphie?"

A rattle sounded, but the darkness and silence persisted for a good three minutes before Zell spoke again. "Hey, look who it is. It's Mr. Sunshine. Say something to the camera."

"What the fuck am I supposed to say to a camera?" came the mordant reply. "Shouldn't you be painting, Chicke-"

"You finish that sentence; I'll-"

"You'll what? What are you gonna do, film me to death? In that case, you might want to take the cap off, genius. It's been on the entire time."

"Oh. So it has. Heh. Whadaya know." Suddenly, the blackness faded, panning up to show a view of Balamb Garden's main room, decorated with blue tarps on both the ceilings and the floors.

A muttered comment by the same voice didn't quite make it to the audio.

"Yeah, same to you, asshole," replied Zell. But there was no malice in his tone, nor in the other voice's. It was a light banter, casual like rubber bullets.

The camera continued to pan around the room. Students hung from the ceilings and stood on platforms on the sides, all brandishing paintbrushes and bright red bandanas, (courtesy of Mrs. Dinct.) Architects were walking around, blueprints in hand, shouting orders to the students and shaking their heads. Music blared from a small stereo on the ground that was doing its double AA best to fill the large, dome-shaped room with music. The soldiers were supposed to be painting, but all it looked like they were doing was throwing paint on one another and doing a fairly good job of it.

"Hey guys! Say hi to the camera!" A few of them waved, grinning and shouts of 'Hey Zell!' traveled over the music. The camera wiggled, and Zell's hand appeared in front of the screen for a moment.

The picture swerved, and Zell's face appeared in front of the screen. "Greetings, all! This is the amazing Zell Dinct-"

"More like the village idiot-" came a caustic drawl from somewhere off screen, the same voice that had taunted him earlier.

"Hey, screw you!" Zell cleared his throat. "Anyway, as I was saying, I, the-"

"Biggest moron here," Interjected the same voice, this time coming from another direction.

"That's it! I warned you! Don't make me put this camera down!" A pause, and the camera angle was adjusted as laughter ensued in the background. "Whatever. As I was saying, I, Zell Dinct, will now conduct a tour of the new and rapidly improving Balamb Garden!"

The camera turned, sloppily, and Selphie came into focus, a paint roller in her grip, wearing a pair of paint-covered overalls and a red bandanna on her forehead She was strung to the ceiling by a rope, and her feet were planed firmly on either side of a yet-unfinished paint job. The young woman was covered in paint, and two white streaks were even painted under her eyes, apparently for spirit value.

"And here's the lovely Selphie Tilmitt, sporting Balambwear complete with lovely red bandanna done by my own lovely Ma Dinct. If you're not covered in paint today, then baby, it just ain't Balambwear."

Grinning, Selphie, stuck out her tongue and waved her roller at him. "Shouldn't you be painting, Zelly?"

"Naw! I'm recording this for prosperity!"

"It's posterity, moron!" came another voice. The camera swiveled to catch Irvine, hair tied back in a ponytail and a red bandana tied around his head in a similar fashion to Selphie's. Like most of the other cadets, he wore a plain white tank top and a pair of black Garden-issued sweatpants. A white bandage was wrapped securely underneath the tank top beneath, ensuring that the young man's movement would not disturb the scar tissue. His tanned skin was also covered in a coating of paint. It appeared that no one had escaped untainted from an apparent paint war that had taken place beforehand.

"Hey, Irvine, try to get some on the wall, huh?" shouted Zell. Irvine looked down at Zell from his position on the rope, shot the camera a winning, toothy smile, then promptly flipped Zell the bird.

"Nice, Irvine!" shouted Zell. "Way to really express yourself!"

"Get a paintbrush, lazy!" shouted Irvine back at him, but the gunslinger was grinning good-naturedly as he flicked his paintbrush down at his friend. The angle swerved. "Damnit man! Selphie's gonna cut off my nuts if I wreck her camera!" The camera angle skittered back, and whirled around.

A pair of older women came into view, both working on propping up one of the newly painted doors. The two women were talking, smiling, although their faces wore more age and sadness than did most of the young ones around them.

"Hey, gals! What's a couple a' hot babes like you doin' in a place like this?"

The older of the two women turned, revealing the kindly, plump face of Ma Dinct. The woman promptly swatted at him with a rag. "Oh, you!"

The camera jumped back to avoid the rag. "Aw, come on you, too! Strike a pose, babes!"

Zell's enthusiasm was infectious. The two women rolled their eyes, exasperated, but proceeded to wave in response.

"Away with you," said Edea, laughing softly, shooing him. "Go and torment the others."

Still chuckling, the camera panned around, to where a pretty raven-haired girl was working on painting one of the doorways. She, too, seemed to have fought a losing paint war...that, come to think of it, he had started.

"Hey, Rin! Smile for the camera!"

The young woman turned, a vibrant smile lighting up her face as she waved, paintbrush in hand. Her coveralls were spotted with white paint, and there was a large smudge across one cheek.

The camera then panned off to the side, to where a black-clad figure stood, hand on hip as he watched the reconstruction process, a stern frown gracing his handsome features. His arm was still tightly slung to his body in a cast sporting nearly every signature Garden had to offer.

The unfolding scene showed Rinoa sauntering up to an unsuspecting Squall, and, taking a hold of a roller brush, running it the length of Squall's back. Squall turned, surprised, glaring at Rinoa as the young woman burst into giggles. She whispered something in his ear, then smeared a streak of white on his face with her paint-covered hand. He glared sullenly at her, and his girlfriend began laughing hysterically at the irritable look that overcame his features.

There was, however, just a hint of a smile within that frown, if one knew to look for it.

The camera shook with Zell's laughter. "You- you look like a freakin' skunk, man!"

"Rinoa, Angelo's eating the paint again."

"I'll be right there."

Squall's eyes focused on the camera then, and narrowed as he stalked towards it, a murderous look in his eyes.

"Shit!" exclaimed the young camera operator, a flurry of motion and haphazard scenery swishing as Zell retreated. The floor was the only picture for several minutes as the martial artist caught his breath.

The cafeteria woman and her hairy wart came into view, along with the rest of the cafeteria staff who had been hardy enough to survive the collapse. Zell had a theory about that relating to the high metal-content in the cafeteria food, but no one was particularly interested. All the staff stood behind a long white table, each pouring juice into Styrofoam cups or preparing a sandwich. The camera, however, focused on a large crock pot, next to which a few bags of hot dog buns could bee seen.

"And may I say you ladies are looking especially lovely today?" asked the camera, bowing just slightly.

The head woman gave the camera a dirty look, hands on hips. "You ain't getting' nothin', Dinct. Lunch doan start for an hour. Now git!"

"Hag," muttered the camera.

"I heard that!" came the gruff reply. "No hot dogs for you, Dinct!"

"Aw, shit! Not again!"

The camera angle rocked suddenly, and the camera panned down to focus on a large, dark-colored mongrel, who was covered in white hand prints from where the other cadets had been petting him. A red bandana had been tied around his neck as well. The monstrous thing barked, tail wagging like a propeller. Angelo appeared at his side, also wearing a bandana and looking particularly (and suspiciously) fat.

"Hey, it's Cerberus and Angelo, my favorite couple! Hey guys! Wanna go steal some hot dogs for me? Go on, boy! Go on girl! Find the hot dogs!" The dogs let out a bark loud enough to shatter concrete, then ran off, weaving through the crowd.

A crash ensued.

"Who let those damned dogs out again?" Came a loud shriek could be heard above the flurry of activity, followed by another loud crash. "Zell Dinct! Where is that boy?"

The camera angle turned, quickly. "Heh. Right. Anyway, here's the new ceiling we'll be putting up, complete with mag-generating shields. It's Ceres' idea, so 'course I have no idea what the hell it's gonna be, but it sure sounds cool, doesn't it?" The angle twisted, showing several students waving from their perches on the ceiling. "Hey! I know! Let's go ask her!"

The camera moved through the crowd, displaying several waving students.

The angle then swiveled down to a lower point in the floor, a gaping hole where the elevator had once been. A young woman dangled from a rope connected to the first level, her body position nearly horizontal as she dug her hands into a group of wires. Her body was strapped in by several belts and cables, and a bunch of flashlights were taped to the stairwells to light the dork hole. She appeared to be humming to herself.

"Hey!" shouted Zell. "Who's down there?"

The figure glanced up at his voice, pushing a pair of plastic goggles up onto her forehead. Black soot stained Ceres' cheeks and tank top, and her hands were nearly black from digging in the wiring for the elevator. The short, dark hair that poked out from her bandana was also covered in a layer of carbon dust.

"Ugh, Zell! Get that camera out of here! I look terrible!"

"Naw! You look great! Hey, Garden gonna fly again, babe?"

The young woman shook her head, gazing up at him from the dark depths of the basement. "Nope!" The young woman spread her hands, face lighting up in an impish grin. "When I get done with her, she'll soar!"

"That's the spirit! Hey, why doncha explain this new mag-shield generator thing for posterier!"

"It's posterity, Zell," said his girlfriend, grinning. "And the technical side of it is pretty boring."

"Aw come on, you know it turns me on when you talk all technical."

The young woman just shook her head, blushing. "Will you go away if I explain it?"

"Maybe……"

"All right. Recent develops in chemical engineering have rendered specific metal alloys capable of conducting a weak mag current," began the young woman, separating a bunch of mult-colored wires in her hands. "However, since magic thrives only in living tissue and is conducted through biotic synapses in the body, a bio-medium was needed. The poison isolated from the Neo-Sorceress Adel is actually a living tissue heavily affected by magical radiation, so much so that the Neo-Sorceress Adel was nearly magic herself. Combined with a basic preservative, this tissue can be combined with the metal to conduct a very, very strong magic current, over twice the amount that a human body is capable of. We're running these new cables up to Garden's northern and southern poles, where we can generate a shield twice as powerful as even Rinoa is capable of. Seven stations, powered by adept magic users, will provide the magic current necessary to generate these shields, which can be held over an extended period of time."

Zell cleared his throat. "So, uh, basically, B. Garden's gonna kick ass?"

Arya smiled. "Virtually indestructible, and we have Adel to thank. If everything goes as planned, Garden will be, in effect, impregnable as long as the shields are sustained."

"That's good, right?"

Arya laughed, giving Zell a thumbs-up sign. "Awesome, in fact."

Chuckling from behind the camera. "Now you're speaking my language!"

Smirking, the young woman blew him a kiss. "Now get out of here!" she yelled, laughing. "You're distracting me!"

"Nooooo friggin' idea what she just said," muttered the camera as the angle once again focused on the ground level. "Hey, let's go pester someone else."

"Gimme that."

"Hey, no way, man! Aren't you supposed to be painting?"

"Got tired of painting."

"Well, me too. Gimme that back!"

A struggle occurred off camera, causing the audio to rumble. Suddenly Irvine's face came onscreen, grinning like the devil himself. "Hey ladies, you're now experiencing Irvine-vision." The angle panned back around, sunlight blinding the lens for a moment before Garden's familiar walls came back into view. "As y'all can see, Balamb-renovation stage one is in full swing. We even had nice weather for a change." The camera angle panned up, once again focusing on the sunlight. "Zell's had to take a break from filming, seein' as he's currently being chased by one of the cafeteria ladies."

The camera once again spun around to focus on the grinning cowboy. "And now, for me, on camera! What more could y'all want!"

Irvine glanced off camera for a moment, then the angle lurched again before the picture went black.

"Get off me, man!"

"Get your fist out of my spleen, Zell!"

"Don't expect me to take it easy on you 'cause you're a damned cripple!"

'Cripple? This from the gimp-master himself! I'll break yer friggin' nose-"

"You're worse than a pack of Moombas! Gimme that!" Selphie's voice sounded off camera, then the audio rattled again. "My poor camera. Did the barbarians hurt you?" A rattle was recorded on the audio, and then Selphie's paint-streaked face once again came into view. "There. All fixed. Now, if you'll direct your attention to the far ceiling," The angle panned up once again, to show a bunch of blue and white colored streamers affixed to the ceiling and sloping down in shining cords. "This is the beginning of the Garden Festival, which will commence as soon as the renovations are complete. I, Selphie Tilmitt, am, of course, once again director of activities and head of the planning committee, and-"

"Hey, Miss Tilmitt? There's a problem with wiring over by the Infirmary, and both Ceres and Xyrxis are in the sub-basement still."

The camera angle was still on the streamers. "All right, I'll be there in a minute. Hey, you, take this."

"What the hell do I want this for?" came the caustic reply. "Do I not look busy to you?"

"Just take it, Mr. Crabby-pants." snapped Selphie's voice, the camera angle swerving as it changed hands. "I'll be back in a minute. Try not to tape anything inappropriate."

"Yeah, right." The picture swerved, and turned in a circle. "How the hell- oh, I get it." The camera began bouncing as the figure behind it walked, the audio picking up the sound of music, laughter, and pounding, an echo that had filled Garden all day.

A group of girls passed the camera by, both carrying paint buckets. Both glanced at the camera, and giggled.

"Ladies." The camera angle bowed, then straightened as the operator continued to weave through the crowd. The camera then focused on Squall, who was now covered in paint.

"The hell happened to you?" Squall just glared at the camera before stalking away, trying to run the paint out of his hair with one hand.

The camera angle changed back to the sunlit floors of B. Garden's main floor before the picture fuzzed. "The hell's wrong with this thing? Piece of shit." The picture jolted as several loud noises filled up the audio, sounding suspiciously like someone was beating the hapless device. Dead air followed for two minutes, along with a constant string of cussing.

"Fucking camera. Hey, there she is." The picture once again came into focus, this time on a young woman in front of a window. She was crouching on a paint-spattered tarp, dressed in an old white tank top and a pair of faded jeans covered in paint and sawdust. Cerberus bounded up, a mess of fur and paint, and smiling, she reached over to pet the large dog between the ears. Suddenly, the massive mongrel looked up, and darted off just as quickly, apparently nearly running over the cameraman, because the picture wobbled violently.

"Damned dog! Hey, gorgeous!"

No response. Not even a look, although several other women around her looked up and giggled. The cameraman sighed.

The young woman examined a cross of wires, and, biting her lip, connected two of them. The light overhead burst into a buzzing sound before plinking on, drowning the woman in a sea of florescent lights. She looked up, smiling as brilliantly as the lights as she squinted.

It was then that she noticed the camera. She waved. A band could be seen around her finger, glinting silver in the light. "Where'd you steal that camera from?"

"Some crazy chick threw it at me," came the reply.

She smiled and shook her head. "I can't believe Selphie trusted you with that thing."

"Me either. The chick really is nuts." The angle grew steadily closer, until all that was visible was an eye and a cheek.

"Stop that!" she laughed. "Don't you have better things to film?"

"None that I can think of." The angle panned back, the operator chuckling.

She stuck out her tongue and lifted one of the buckets. "Fine. Don't you have more important things to do?"

A wry chuckle. "I can think of a few. But you said, 'later'."

She rolled her eyes, covering her eyes with her hand. "I can't believe you said that on camera."

"Of course you can."

She laughed, once again trying to dodge the camera.

"Come on. Say a little something into the camera."

"A little something into the camera," she replied exasperatedly, trying to shield the camera's view with her hand as she attempted to get around him.

"Very original. I see film in your future. Low-budget, tawdry numbers…the wardrobe is minimal-"

The young woman responded with a single finger, attempting to move past him and looking humorously vexed.

Laughter. "Is that a promise?"

Now she was positively glaring at him. "Turn it off!"

"What's in it for me?"

The woman looked at the camera, exasperated, hiding her face with her hand and peeking out between her fingers. Giving up, she put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, just slightly. "You'll never know unless you turn it off."

"Eh…"

"Seifer! Turn it off!"

"What? And miss filming this crucial moment in history?

Beyond exasperated, Quistis held up a dripping roller, insinuating him with it.

"Too late. Rin already got me."

The camera picture then grew closer, her image increasing in size until her hand was pressed up against the screen. "Stop!" came the laughing response as she kept her other paint-smeared hand up, in front of her face. "Selphie! Help!"

"Give me that, you barbarian! I leave you alone for a minute…" The camera angle once again jerked as the camera changed hands, only to reveal the two young people locked in an amorous embrace. "Oh! You two! Can't you go somewhere else and do that?"

Quistis pulled away, blushing. Seifer, however, wearing plaster in his scar and a holochip that made him look a little (eerily) like Laguna Loire, was shameless, and grinned like the devil himself. Quistis buried her face in his neck to hide herself from the camera view.

Seifer winked. "What, Tilmitt? You wanna make this a pay-per-view?"

Selphie tut-tutted. "Hyne, this place is going downhill. Sickos, all of you!" Just then, the camera lurched. "Zell! You give me back my camera, you big meanie!"

"Hey, Dinct!" The camera angled whirled around to see Irvine sporting a brushful of paint and wearing a devious expression.

"Hey guys, you wouldn't!"

"Hey Squall, is it just me, or does Zell seem awfully…clean…to you?" asked Irvine, grinning wickedly.

"Yep." The normally stoic leader was holding a can of paint. "Too clean."

"I agree!" Came Rinoa's voice from somewhere behind him, sounding particularly devious.

The camera panned around to focus on Irvine and Ceres, (still wearing her goggles), both sporting a dripping paintbrush. "Definitely." Echoed the two.

"Quistis? A little help here?" the camera turned again to reveal both Quistis and Squall, each holding a can of paint, and Seifer with a dripping roller, grinning wickedly. "Guys? Guys, come on, guys!"

Thus began the Second Paint War, which would go down in history as the messiest, most irresponsible waste of paint that Headmistress Xu had ever seen in her life.

Laughter filled the audio as the screen went white…literally.

After a few seconds of darkness on the film, the picture once again faded in, revealing a large group of people, all covered in paint, standing in the middle of the quad. In the center of the large group, the infamous (if painted) faces of Irvine Kinneas, Selphie Tilmitt, Zell Dinct, Ceres Morlisius, Squall Leonheart, Rinoa Heartilly, Quistis Trepe and the disguised face of Seifer Almasy all crowded onto the bronze platform, smashed in against one another and laughing as the other cadets crowded below, cheering. For an instant, they were not the Fated Children. They were not soldiers. They were a happy, paint-splattered family, basking in the glow of happier times.

The video ended with the group piled onto a bronze statue of a distinguished looking Cid Kramer, looking handsome and hopeful as his bronze eyes stared into the distance...into the future.

Balamb Garden loomed in the distance, its blue and copper hues shining in the sun, restored to its former glory…and its children, laughing and waving, as the picture faded.

*

…

…

…

**Epilogue…**

It is twilight, and the sun is setting over the ocean in a splash of color. The sands are bathed in a mixture of sunlight and shadow, still glimmering with a crimson splash of light. It's still one of his favorite things to watch….well, second-favorite now.

He leans on the doorframe, looking out to sea. He's wearing a pair of old pants and a thin white t-shirt, enjoying the feel of the sea breeze on his skin and the feel of the wooden floorboards beneath his bare feet. It's his favorite time of day- back from a long mission and looking forward to a quiet evening of relaxation.

Cerberus is running loose- chasing seagulls and barking up the beach. Glyph is sitting on the cooling sands, his head craned towards the fading sunlight as he keeps watch over the backyard.

He smiles, folding his arms.

She hasn't seen him yet.

She's standing at the shore, barefoot, wearing a white cotton dress. Her hair is down around her shoulders, and with every gust of wind, it whips behind her.

As he watches, transfixed, she tilts her head back, spreads her arms, and spins on some unspoken cue- the dress and her hair whip around in a flash of ivory and ochre. She spins and spins, her skirt twirling, the salt breeze in her hair and the waves lapping around her ankles, and the look on her face- she's smiling a little with her eyes closed- and suddenly he wants to catch her up, to steal that soft smile off her lips and keep it forever. Her skirt ribbons with every circle, offering a tantalizing glimpse of her bronzed legs.

She is dancing….for whom, he isn't sure, but the look on her face is enough for him. If he squints, he can catch the glint around her finger- a thin flash of silver that comforts him somehow…that tells him she'll stay.

Mid-twirl, she catches him watching her, and her cheeks color a little as she realizes he's been watching her all this time. The lip of her skirt flares, and her hair is windswept, wild, as daring and careless as her smile. She holds out her hand, her smile inviting and a little mischievous.

_Dance with me._

He drops his jacket on the porch, and walks out to meet her.

He's home…_finally_.

**END**.

(ungodly long) author's Notes:

I suppose an ungodly long fic (what is it now 300,000+ words?) deserves an ungodly long author's note, right?

Well, I'm finally finished with Fire and Ice. Is there room for improvement? Certainly…and going through this piece again has been great practice for me. However, I can't, and won't, let myself go over it again. I hope you've enjoyed the new chapters and the other subtle changes. Thank you for all your suggestions, comments, and criticisms- I hope I put them to good use. Do realize that although I may not have followed all suggestions, I certainly took them all into account. Many didn't like the length, for example, or the positions of the climaxes….but…I must say I grew rather attached to my little plotbunnies, and though I agree a lot of them weren't necessary, I left them in for the hell of it.

I'd also like to add that Fire and Ice was the result of a writing challenge from a good friend of mine while I was 500 miles away from home and bored out of my mind. My writing challenge was as follows: reinvent the FF8 universe (with my VERY limited initial knowledge), with as many Seifer/Quistis clichés as possible. To her, that included: Seifer returning to Garden, Galbadia being the bad guy, the return of at least one sorceress, copious amounts of Seifer angst, Quistis as an Ice Queen, two troubled pasts, Seifer's redemption, and most importantly, a Seifer/Quistis plot. My challenge was to pull them off…and I'll admit, it turned out to be a lot longer than the 13 chapters I originally planned and was a lot harder than I thought! All in all, I tried my best. Thanks to all of you, I think my writing has come a long way…but it still has a long way to go! As you can probably tell by now, I'm never satisfied with my writing, but I'm as satisfied with this as I'm going to be, and it's time to move on. I think the goal of any good writer should be to re-invent the human condition- make it new, exciting, and captivating. I'm still working on it, obviously.

What can I say? I'm sad that Fire and Ice is at an end. Throughout writing it, I've come to love the characters, and in the end, amidst possibilities of poignant angst and delectable irony, I found that all I really wanted for them was a happy ending. So, I hope you'll all forgive me my fairy-tale whimsy and enjoy the end as much as I enjoyed writing it. This story has provided an outlet for me through many difficult times…and all of your reviews, e-mails, artwork, and messages have really motivated, helped, and enriched my existence during the past few years (wow, that long?). Anyway, I'm both baffled and honored that so many have read this story, and honored by every e-mail, picture, IM, and journal messages that you all have sent me.

A sequel may be in the works for Fire and Ice, depending on reader interest and my own available time. (A/N: Gods and Gardens is in progress, and will be updated when I have time.)

Dedications: Let me say first that I will probably forget someone in this long little list, and for that I apologize in advance as I am compiling this thing at one in the morning and am running entirely on caffeine fumes.

First and foremost, to my first reviewer, Meg. To Renoa Heartilly, for her artwork and her support. To Liz and Jes, my two favorite online 'little sisters', for all their messages, artwork, and support, MadHattess and the CatMint, for all their support and our interesting late-night chats- I love our conversations! Mibi_chan, for all of our conversations and her help especially for my 'love scenes'. Xahra99 and her sister, two talented girls who honored me by sharing their artwork and writing with me, turpentineshine, for all our great online conversations and support, Akewataru, whose artistic talent I really envy and who drew the most beautiful 'fire and ice memories' picture- massively talented! To Death By Eclipse, Nesza, and Lost_Witness, for their wonderful fanart up on my host's sites. For all who have e-mailed me…I love all your e-mails! To my webmistresses, Kari and LostWitness…a million thank you's to these talented ladies who deemed my story worthy of their time and bandwidth- I love you gals! Thanks also to Aesriella, a truly awesome beta that helped me a TON this time around!

I should also probably dedicate this chapter to the countless professors whose classes I completely ignored to work on this story. Thanks to all in my livejournal community, you guys have been great inspirations and counselors when needed, especially this year.

This story is dedicated to all my readers, those who were kind enough to recommend my story to others and put me on their favorite lists- I'm honored and humbled by all your support. This is for all who took the time to review, to give me pointers or encouragement. A million thank you's for deeming this story worthy of your attention. And finally, if you enjoyed this story, or if you didn't, thank you for reading it anyway!

When I first began this story, my only goals were to improve my writing and to see if, maybe, it could attract over 100 reviews for feedback…I didn't plan on it being any longer than 13-16 chapters and I didn't really plan on getting over 100 reviews. What wound up happening is still a surprise to me, every time I added a chapter or received a review. At any rate, I think I've improved my writing along the way, and I have all of you to thank!

So, anyway….thanks for reading!

The following quote is stolen from Shakespeare, and mangled by me:

"If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear, and this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream. Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. Else [altol] a liar call. And so good night unto you all."

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

altol


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